Matt & Katie

Happy new year!

2012-01-04T20:14:00.000-06:00

2011 has been a crazy year. We settled in Iowa (having moved the previous December 28th), became a family of four, started two jobs, started a business--and countless other moments that were no less significant. So here at the beginning of 2012, what does life look like?

-Matt is still working at the co-op. After a disc injury to his back this fall, he's now trained in multiple departments to avoid the overuse that led to his original injury. Despite having re-aggravated it a few times, it does seem to be on the mend. And in spite of having very little time to devote to it, he's becoming an amazingly skilled hand tool woodworker.

-I've had several births in the past year, and actually rang in the new year at a birth last night! While it's been stressful to try to learn the ins and outs of running a business on the fly, while at the same time keeping busy with our family life, I love what I do and the clients I serve. I also continue to work at the hospital during off months for midwifery, and feel incredibly fortunate to be able to both keep my skills up and supplement our income this way.

-Eden is two and a half, (mostly) potty trained, and beginning to talk a blue streak. She's bright, funny, and generally sensitive to others' needs, including Eve's. As a toddler, she still battles frequent impulses to do things like kicking and throwing, but we admire her high spirits and energy level. She still has the most insane food preferences I've ever known anyone to have, young or old. Favorites include cod liver oil, brussels sprouts, tuna fish, meatballs, broccoli, carrots, lemons, and dried mangos.

-Eve is 8 months old with a lovely, sweet personality. She's sitting up and starting to babble. She loves playing with toys and watching Eden's antics (though is very sensitive about being roughhoused if Eden gets too close). She's really not eating any solid foods yet, as when we've tried them she hasn't seemed quite ready yet.

The less-than-glowing report is that neither girl is a stellar sleeper. And of course, like all good parenting problems, it's a moving target. Sometimes Eden goes down like a dream and sleeps all night. Other times, it's fighting bedtime (with shrieks and screams you wouldn't believe). Still other times it's frequent nighttime wakings. Eve, on the other hand, is adopting Eden's abbreviated nap schedule and still gets up every 2-3 hours to eat or pee. So between the two of them, we're often up every hour throughout the night--not exactly restful. We've tried troubleshooting it every way we can think of--and just wind up feeling like we're chasing our tails. Potty training has taken a similar circuitous, one-step-forward, two-steps-back kind of a route, which is similarly exhausting and frustrating.

For our own part, Matt and I entered this winter feeling bloated and sluggish and out of shape. Our clean, lean, primal eating habits have really taken a hit this past year, and so between the weight gain and back pain and overall low energy level (since sleep isn't an option), we knew we had to do something. I'm pleased to report that the following regimen seems to have us back on the road to good health:

Green smoothies every day. We invested in a refurbished Vitamix blender and for lunch every day we have a mixture of spinach, carrots, apple, pear, lemon, and ginger--all thrown in whole. It's surprisingly palatable, and both girls actually love it.

Yoga every morning. We love the Living Arts yoga series for being approachable for everyone, beginners on up. Matt has long been a huge fan of yoga, and after trying it the past couple of months, I can't believe it was under my nose all this time. I FEEL FANTASTIC after doing yoga, in a way I thought was probably behind me forever. We shoot for at least once a day--two or three times is even better.

Healthy, primal, low-carb eating. No sugars or grains, minimal natural sweeteners (like honey) and moderate amounts of carbs and starches (such as potatoes and corn, though I know the latter is technically a grain).

Next up on our list of constant experiments: trading in our morning coffee for tea. We'll see how that goes...

Anyhow, some recent pictures:

My cloth wipe solution

2011-11-13T20:55:00.001-06:00

Cloth wipe solution

Ingredients:

-2 cups water
-2 squirts Dr Bronner's liquid castile soap (I use unscented)
-1 squirt natural baby lotion of your choice (for now, I use Burts Bees Milk & Honey, which I think has been "reformulated," and the reformulation is not worth buying--but the old version makes my wipes smell divine. You could also use a drop or two of essential oils if desired, or a plain unscented lotion.)
-Empty jar

Combine in jar and shake well. Place 5-6 fleece wipes (=cut a cheap fleece blanket into squares; or can serge your own, or use baby washcloths) into a ziploc or other waterproof bag, and pour a small amount of solution over. Squish to equalize coverage. Use within a few days, and replenish as needed. Cute label optional!

I love this because:

the ingredients are customizable to what your baby does or does not tolerate well (Eve's diaper area looks stellar since we switched back to cloth wipes)
they're easier to keep "juicy" than disposable wipes, which kept going dry on me
no questionable or unpronounceable ingredients (even 7th Generation wipes seemed to me to have way too many ingredients)
there's no more sorting disposable wipes out of the cloth diaper pail
it's cheap and easy!

Latest challenge: No-spend month

2011-11-12T21:49:00.000-06:00

Ever on a quest to save money, we had gotten a bit lax as of late and so with no births on the horizon for November, we've resolved to make it a No Spend Month to try to keep our budget balanced. Well, no extra or nonessential spending. Gas and food are non-optional; as, I've found, is parking if I'm to make any money by working at the hospital. (Getting dropped off would be the only other option, but would cost more in gas than it would save in parking.) But anything else strictly nonessential is out. I meant to keep a tally of how much we've saved, but ha! In my free time, right? So I'll just rattle off a few of the things it's occurred to me to buy, and how I've circumvented it:

-Baby wipes (I know, I know): switched back to cloth.

-Greeting cards: called or emailed instead.

-Groupon, LivingSocial, et al: did without.

-Ditto for eating out (a particular Achilles heel) or getting coffee.

-Buying lunch at work: brown-bagged it (the usual, but tempting to skip when I'm running late, which is always).

And the month isn't even half over yet. Stay tuned for updates, including a fantastic recipe for a natural solution to use on cloth wipes!

We're still here

2011-08-28T07:02:00.000-05:00

In more ways than one. It's hard to believe it's been two months since I've posted! In the meantime, we've been through a variety of challenges as a family and had to make some major decisions. Perhaps the most visible of those is that we've decided to stay put for the time being. Thinking it over carefully, alternating parenting round the clock just so we could pay our rent didn't feel like the right thing for our family or the best thing for our girls at this point in our lives. We feel really lucky to have a branch of the family that is happy to have us and our girls camp out with them as long as needed--as well as another branch within a few hours' drive that love us and are happy to lend whatever reinforcements we need as well. We've spent several days this summer with three and four grandparents on deck, and I have to say it's been a lot of fun and very gratifying to see how well everyone works and gets along together. We're grateful and humbled by all the love and support everyone shows us on a daily basis, and it's really reaffirmed for us that there's nothing more important than our family.

So for the foreseeable future, we're going to continue to function as one, big, happy, multigenerational, four-pet, two-business household. (Sounds a little crazy put like that, doesn't it?) One that note, midwifery is starting to take off, which is a little overwhelming but extremely exciting. I remember doing my training in Pennsylvania and spending beautiful fall days with my favorite midwife, driving around the countryside and visiting expectant families in their homes, and thinking "This is the life." Well, it's now at least partially my life as well. And while there are definitely things we miss about the various towns and landscapes we've occupied in the past, being near family is definitely right, and Iowa is starting to feel like home.

Eden is definitely moving into a more settled phase of being as well. She's definitely still intense and energetic, we're all finding our way together and learning to relax and enjoy one another more in the process. She's also learning to channel her energy and focus for longer periods of time. We spend lots of time playing and climbing outside, building with Duplos, and playing with Play-Doh. She's now potty trained and continues to be a spectacular big sister to Eve--who's morphed from a sleepy sack of a newborn into a curious, smiley and easygoing baby who loves watching Eden's adventures from the safety of the sling or Bumbo.

Matt and I are feeling like we're really beginning to hit our stride, in our marriage and as parents. Much of this is due to deliberate reflection and effort on each our parts, and I think it's also helpful to feel like we're finally in a settled spot for awhile. As opposed to our various moves in the past few years, we can make friends or find a restaurant we like without thinking that it's too bad we'll be leaving soon. Even if we don't live at Belmont Hill forever, we feel like we've found the region we'll be calling home, and that's a tremendous relief for everybody.

Easing up

2011-06-23T20:28:00.000-05:00

Things with Eden were 1000% better today. While we still had our share of tantrums, potty accidents, and other standard 2-year-old fare, and she is still "declining" to take a nap, she was actually very sweet, cuddly, and affectionate most of the day, did like she was told more often than usual, and spent most of the day using the potty and wearing dry training pants.

I felt like I'd been let out of jail.

It's interesting because it's like when the tide went out on this last round of Eden's angst, interesting things were left washed up on the shore, so to speak. All of a sudden she's trying hard to be more verbal--actually "use" her words, to communicate, not just trying them out once out of novelty and reverting to screaming when she wants or needs something. She's saying new things, like "I know," and "Iowa" (a particular favorite). And, as noted above, she's suddenly taken a renewed interest in wearing underpants and using the potty (praise be).

I've heard from multiple parenting sources that "half" ages (2-1/2, 3-1/2, etc) tend to be times of instability and "whole" ages tend to be more stable times. As such, I've heard that the "terrible twos" are actually more likely to be exhibited by kids who are either 1-1/2 or 2-1/2. So I'm choosing to be cautiously optimistic that, with Eden's 2nd birthday on the horizon in just six days, her recent storminess was a developmental crisis of sorts, and that the difficulties that have plagued us for the past several months might be fading for the time being and that perhaps we're headed for somewhat calmer waters.

Rough

2011-06-21T23:02:00.000-05:00

Is how things have felt lately. With regard to the last post, Eden is still on a hardcore napping strike, and bedtime isn't going well either. (Except for tonight, when we skipped out to a movie and my mom was kind enough to put her down--of course, she went willingly and easily). As a result, she's sleep-deprived and irrational, generally a kicking, screaming, sobbing mess most of the day, making it impossible to get anything done and nearly impossible to keep oneself in check after awhile. We've tried it all to get her to sleep more--longer bedtime routines, shorter bedtime routines, staying with her until she falls asleep, NOT staying with her until she falls asleep...all to no avail. So our nerves are more than a bit frayed from that.

Also, I've taken a nursing job while I work on getting midwifery going, so that we can pay our bills in the meantime--especially with a move in the works. (The idea of flying solo with these two kids (well, mainly the one, to be honest) while Matt is at work, without my parents as backup, is daunting--but we'll see. It had to come sometime, right?) The nursing gig is something I'm thankful for, and only disappointed about because it means I'll be away from the girls more. Probably not a ton, hopefully just a night or two a week--but still, it isn't what I'd planned on. And for us both be pulled away from family life more than we'd like, and still be struggling a bit to make ends meet-- well, again, it's not exactly the picture we fantasized about.

But still. I took Eden to the library today, and I left the diaper bag (and her monkey harness--how I love that monkey harness) at home, and so she was running, yelling, jumping, and climbing like a how-NOT-to-behave-in-the-library video. Then, with my patience running a bit thin with the stresses of the day, in the checkout line was a mom with a little boy confined to a wheelchair. And I realized that that mom would probably give ANYTHING to have the kind of library visit I'd just sighed my way through, even just once. And I remembered that Eden won't always be two, and that money problems are just money problems, and that we're all healthy and together and that those are the two most important things. So I'm able to end the day feeling kind of like I've been pulled through a knothole, but on the whole, grateful, nonetheless.

Crazy

2011-06-10T22:50:00.000-05:00

...pretty much sums up the kind of day we had today. It started last night, probably, when we went out to dinner and so didn't get Eden in bed until after 9:30--almost 3 hours later than usual. She's never been a kid who can make that up the next morning (she still rose at 6) or on a nap the next day (still clocked in at under an hour). And by about 10am, I was ready to lose it. Crayons thrown in the litterbox. Crayons bitten off in the mouth.Closed doors repeatedly opened so that cats could frolic down and join the bed and breakfast crowd below. Cat litter played with, cat water dumped. Coffee jostled onto the couch. And that was all just this morning. Then there was a full-on, kicking and screaming tantrum when it was time for naptime, a fork thrown into the toilet later...the list goes on and on.

I'm fairly sure she doesn't get as much sleep as she needs, but we've tried everything we can think of to put her down sooner (she already goes to bed at 7), put her down later (in the hopes that it would get her to sleep in later, but see above) take a longer nap, and take a second nap. All have resulted in a huge outpouring of time and energy, for no gain. AHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

I love Eden, and I can truly say I wouldn't choose for her to be any different of a person than she is, but BOY, she can be tiring. I am whipped. And that's with an especially heavy dose of support from both Matt and my mom today.

Luckily for me, my second child is the very soul of patience. And is gaining weight steadily despite the fact that she never gets to nurse for more than about five minutes at a time.

I'm trying not to think about how days like this will go when we move out of my parents' house. I'm doing my best to follow my resolution to focus on what I need for today. And today, I had what I needed. But there were moments where it felt like, just barely.

Having it to do over again

2011-06-05T22:08:00.000-05:00

Awhile back, someone commented on a blog post to ask whether we'd be doing things more or less the same way with Eve that we did with Eden. For the most part, the answer is yes.

Here's a rundown on some of the cornerstones of the parenting choices we made with Eden, and our assessment of where it's taken her now that she's almost two.

Homebirth/waterbirth. We never really considered doing anything else. While my labor was (even) shorter this time, clocking in at an hour and a half compared to two and a half hours with Eden, other than that, the births were remarkably similar. Besides the fact that I probably wouldn't have made it to a hospital either time, giving birth in our own surroundings and growing our family at home (rather than having to make that transition in a busy, noisy hospital) was invaluable. And once again, while nothing makes labor fun, our trusty, $100 La Bassine waterbirth pool is hands-down one of the best investments we've ever made!
Breastfeeding. Like the above, this one was a lock. I nursed Eden until she was about one and a half, about to the midway point of my pregnancy with Eve, and it was a close, happy, intimate time. You can read more on that here. Interestingly, I'd intended to nurse Eden longer--until she was two, at least--but in hindsight, I'm really happy with the fact that we weaned when we did. Her personality has so intensified over the past six months, and so I think if we were still nursing, it would be much more difficult/traumatic for her to give up (or accept a "not right now" when she wanted to nurse). I know other families make other choices, and think that's great. This is what evolved for us. Would I do the same for Eve? Yes--both in terms of watching for signs of readiness to wean around age 18 months, and also in terms of letting things evolve in a way that feels natural and comfortable for her and me both. Eve already seems like a very different personality than Eden, so we'll see what happens.
Cloth diapering. Once again, we fell in love with this system when we had Eden, and never considered doing it any other way. Eve and Eden (who is still working on the urine aspect of potty training) are both currently wearing the newborn-sized prefolds (Eden wears them trifolded in a Flip cover) that we got when Eden was, well, a newborn. These two-year-old diapers work as well as ever (though we did purchase a few more, so we aren't doing laundry multiple times a day!). We also still like the prefold-and-cover system (we use these Indian prefolds and Bummis Super Whisper Wrap or Swaddlebee's wool covers), though I do somewhat spoil myself at night or on outings with some of these adorable newborn BumGenius all-in-ones. I bought four on Craigslist back in Virginia, and recently ordered four more. (I don't like AIO's as well for older babies since they're a little harder to get odors and residues out of, but for newborns they work great.) My financial conclusion about cloth diapering? It's possible to save an absolute TON of money, but with all the cute diapers and accessories out there, it's also definitely possible not to! There is also a middle ground-- spending some of the money you're saving on disposables on a few nice cloth splurges.
Elimination communication (EC). We started EC'ing with Eden when she was around 6 weeks old. Her pottying journey has had ups and downs, as I've heard is typical. Between about ages 3 months and 1 year, she was using the potty almost all the time. She would go potty (or try) when we cued her, and she showed definite cues when she had to go. About the time she learned to walk, she realized there were more interesting things to be doing, and also, I think, that she had a choice in the matter. (This was also around the time I started working full-time and we moved to Pennsylvania, so that also could have been a factor.) She never stopped pooping on the potty, but peeing was very hit or miss, and pretty much still is. At 23 months, she will have whole days where she only goes on the potty, but then she'll totally fall off the wagon again. My mom tells us we all trained ourselves at age 26 months, so I'm just following Eden's lead and then holding out hope for that. In the meantime, I'm grateful that I haven't had to spend the past 21 months changing poopy diapers, at least! As far as Eve goes, we don't have nearly the time or free hands to be pottying her like we did with Eden, but I'm working on it, and would definitely love for her to follow in her big sister's footsteps this way.
Babywearing. The best. I started with Eden in a Baby Bjorn, then by about a month old had moved up to a Hotsling and an Ergo. Eventually I fell in love with a Moby, and Eden spent many, many happy hours in there (and occasionally still does). I can also sling her quite well in a hip carry, and did all the way through this pregnancy. This time around, I don't have quite as much time to be wrapping and re-wrapping a Moby, and I think I may be falling in love with a ring sling (borrowed from a friend in anticipating of buying my own). I was a little intimidated by them the first time around, but they're less complicated than a Moby and so infinitely adjustable. I've also successfully worn Eve in the Hotsling and Eden in the ring sling at the same time! Necessity is also pushing me to investigate more back carries, which I never really mastered (or practiced) with Eden. Benefits I saw and have seen from babywearing include a massively content baby, hands-free nursing, the ability to get something done without sacrificing time with my baby, and, unscientifically, many people have commented on Eden's excellent sense of balance, and this is something I hear is improved by the kinesthetics of being worn on an active adult's body rather than hanging out in a crib, bouncer, or carseat.
Cosleeping. Once again, something we didn't know we would love so much. Falling asleep with a sweet newborn on my chest, being able to roll over and nurse half-asleep, constant proximity to my baby, and waking up to her lovely face are just a few of the benefits we've enjoyed with both girls. As with weaning, we'll watch Eve for signs of wanting or needing her own bed sometime around 12-18 months, but unless she's kicking us mercilessly, we'll follow her lead on that as well.
Food choices with solid foods. A wise friend of mine once told me her child didn't become picky until she introduced him to grains--then suddenly all he wanted were Cheerios, granola bars, toast, bread, etc. This is actually what led us into Primal eating. We started Eden on what we ate--no baby foods or purees--around 6 or 7 months. One thing I might change would be to wait longer --it didn't seem like it agreed with her at first. Other than that, though, feeding her a variety of tastes and textures like meats, vegetables, raw dairy, and fruit seems to have resulted in a toddler with a robust (!) appetite and a startling palate (brown mustard, sauerkraut, pickles, zucchini, and broccoli are some of the more mature tastes she enjoys, though like any toddler, she loves a good hot dog too). She's also sturdy, healthy, and almost never sick. While I can't say she's never had grains, I can say that when they're on the table, her consumption of other (more nutritious foods) goes way down. When Eve is ready to eat table food, we plan to feed her what we're eating, and avoid sugar and grains as well.

As I mentioned, Eve and Eden seem to already have radically different personalities, and so I'm sure raising them will be very different experiences, despite their both being girls and despite our similar parenting choices. It's certainly nice, though, that with our second child, we can base our choices on experience as well as intuition and research, and so we at least have a good idea of where to start.

Happy Due Date to Eve

2011-05-14T21:51:00.004-05:00

It's crazy to think that today is Eve's due date! While I didn't necessarily think I would still be pregnant today, I didn't anticipate having a baby who was nearly 3 weeks old, either. As I mentioned earlier, I kind of got the inkling she would stay put a little longer than Eden, who was born 2 weeks early. Obviously I was wrong about that! On the other hand, when I found out I was pregnant this time around, I had a hard time getting my head around having a baby in May (much the same way I couldn't quite imagine having a baby in July--and didn't). April seemed more appropriate, somehow. And that's when Eve's birthday turned out to be.

Things are going pretty well around here.
One thing I've found is that we definitely need to be sure we make sleep a priority. This past week was kind of crazy, with lots of errands to run and having to have both of the cars serviced, so we wound up getting up early and missing out on naps. We've realized it's not a good point in time for us to be doing that! In addition to just barely dragging around, sleep deprivation also makes us much less patient parents, especially to poor Eden. So we've gotten back to taking parenting shifts and sleeping shifts, and overall, everyone seems to be doing better.

Matt is also getting back to eating more primally. I'm trying, but boy, the early days of nursing are a hard time to make any kind of major dietary changes! I'm constantly hungry, and the several pounds of amazing Trader Joe's dark chocolate I have in the cupboard (compliments of my lovely mother-in-law) are more often than not calling my name. Not to mention the ice cream. And peanut-butter-and-strawberry-jam English muffins, which were a weakness when I was first nursing Eden, too.

On the whole, I think we're settling into a pretty good rhythm for the time being. In the morning, Eden is our alarm clock, usually waking up between 6 and 7 and piling into bed with the rest of us. She and I snuggle for awhile and read a few books, or play Legos, until Matt gets up with her around 7 or so--leaving Eve and me to sleep for another blissful couple of hours, since we're still up quite a bit during the night. Eden and Matt play outside, or she follows him around his workshop. Eve and I often get up between 10 and 11, and then I often take a shift with the girls while Matt either naps or gets some other things done. We usually eat lunch sometime around noon, then Eden goes down for a nap by 1. We all catch a quick breather/rest if not a nap while Eden sleeps (usually only a half hour or so), then we get Matt ready to leave for work by 2:15. The afternoon usually involves some combination of playing outside, getting dinner ready, baths, and/or running errands with my mom; then, dinner with my parents, and it's almost time to get Eden ready for bed. Once she's asleep, I catch my breath, hang out with Eve, and work on whatever household chores or business tasks I'd like to accomplish for the day until Matt gets home around 10:30. We catch up and fill each other in...then head off to bed, and it all starts all over again. Obviously things will change considerably once we're living in Coralville and I don't have so many extra hands to help out, but for now, this is what's working for us.

Happy Mother's Day!

2011-05-08T05:00:00.002-05:00

Having another child, the passage of time, and the graduation of my first baby into the toddler stage have all facilitated the fact that every day, I understand my own mother (and other mothers) a little more. On the one hand, there are little daily trials where I have to remind myself to keep the edge of cynicism out of my voice. On the other hand, as I nurse and snuggle a wonderfully sleepy Eve, or laugh and tickle a shrieking Eden, I'm reminded that the best moments of my life are with these girls. It makes me look back at my own childhood a little differently, and helps me understand why our own parents were so anxious for us to move back nearby, especially once we'd produced a grandchild or two.

Posts like this one remind me to love the everyday moments, even the ones that seem like irritations at the time--to relish being so needed, since it doesn't last forever, or even very long. It also made me realize how early our children can be impressed with such a concept. And posts like this one are a sobering reminder of what the true suffering of a mother looks like--how heartbreakingly common it is in the rest of the world, and how the rest of us truly don't (and we pray, won't) ever have any idea. The blogger is a midwife, like me, and a relatively new mother, like me--but unlike me, she's choosing to raise her family in poverty-stricken Africa, where her own children will undoubtedly face an uphill battle to stay healthy and perhaps survive, in the name of maximizing the chances for other mothers and babies.

My own life has been touched by many wonderful and selfless mothers, including my mother-in-law--truly one of the easiest and most comfortable people to be around that I've ever met. She's felt like a mother and a friend since the day we first met. I had two wonderful grandmothers, who unfortunately will never meet the little girls named after them. And this year in particular has been special for the ability to share so many mothering moments (and knowing looks) with my own mother--from the mundane (lots of diapers) to the profound (giving birth), having my mother back in the fabric of my everyday life is something I treasure deeply, and know I will miss once we're out on our own again. Thanks for everything, Mom. And Happy Mother's Day.

What a day this has been; what a rare mood I'm in...

2011-05-07T21:41:00.003-05:00

It's been quite a day around here. This morning, Matt and I got up early and left the girls with my mom so that we could drive about 50 minutes from here and look at a medical exam table for my gestating midwifery practice. We were trying to time it so that I could feed Eve and we would be back before she needed to nurse again (she's pretty reliable about eating every 2-1/2 to 3 hours).

Things were going great as we drove down the highway; I had just said to Matt, "This is really a lovely drive when nobody is screaming at you from the backseat." And he had said, "Oh, it is, and it's such a nice day, finally," or something like that. And then suddenly our car's engine cut out and the speedometer dropped to zero.
Luckily Matt was driving, and noticed right away, and safely guided the car to the shoulder, where it stubbornly refused to start up again or do much of anything. We called AAA and then proceeded to spend the next hour and a half waiting for the tow truck. Not exactly the kind of "time alone together without the kids" that we'd occasionally fantasized about recently, but, well, it was the kind we got. As I've mentioned, I'm trying to be more focused on the present moment than worrying about the future, so instead of getting impatient with the seemingly wasted time (and the sure outlay of money that is to come), I chose instead to try to find as many things as I could to be grateful for about the situation:

1. That Matt was driving and not me. It would have taken me considerably longer to realize the engine had died, and I probably would have been stranded in the middle of the road.

2. That we didn't have the girls with us (and that it wasn't just me and them). If we hadn't needed all of our cargo space for the exam table, we would have brought them along, and it was a long, hot wait in the sun in a dead car. Not to mention the fact that we wouldn't have all been able to squeeze into the tow truck to ride back to Cedar Rapids, and so someone would have had to drive out to pick us up, and the girls' carseats were locked in the Neon and the keys were with us.

3. That it was "just" engine trouble and not an accident--so nobody was hurt.

4. That it happened just outside Iowa City, rather than on our way to Galena (an hour and a half away, where there was another exam table and some other equipment that we were planning to go see until we found this more local option) or on our way to see Matt's family (which is our next anticipated trip, about 3 hours away), both of which would have taken us out of free towing range.

5. That at the last minute, I opted for AAA "Gold," giving me 100 miles of free towing rather than 5. We were probably 30 miles from home when it happened.

6. That Matt and I were together, since the AAA membership is technically in my name only and so if it were just him, he likely wouldn't have been covered.

7. That if we have to be without one of our cars for awhile, it's not the gas-sipping Neon that Matt drives 20 miles to work and back every day.

8. That I wasn't on my way to a birth in the middle of the night.

9. That the weather was nice, making our stranding a not-too-unpleasant one.

10. That my family rallied around us--my brother came to pick us up, my sister and my mom entertained the girls, and I'm hoping my dad will lend us his station wagon to make a second attempt to pick up this exam table. Days like this are why we moved back to the midwest!

Throw in general, "two-children-under-two" chaos, needing to go grocery shopping, today being the last day to lobby Verizon about my phone that's still not working, and Matt having to head off to work shortly after we got back, and everybody was a little bit frazzled by the end of it. And, we have to wait until Monday or Tuesday for an estimate on the car. While it's easy to borrow trouble and worry about how much it will cost, or wonder how we're going to manage when these types of calamities strike and our closest family is even 30 minutes away, I'm going to try to focus on the many things that went right today. Today, we were able to (mostly) get where we needed to go. Today, we needed help--and we got it. Today, we were all fed, clothed, housed, and loved. And that's more than enough for today.

Settling in

2011-05-06T22:21:00.005-05:00

Eve is 11 days old, and of course by now it feels like we've always had her. She's a very easygoing baby so far, and she's even up at night less than I had anticipated--two facts we're grateful for. I'm also incredibly thankful that Eden is turning out to be a doting and proud older sister. She's extremely sweet and loving toward Eve, constantly wanting to give her kisses, hold her, and share her things with her, and has really not acted jealous or anything like that at all. If anything, I'd have to say that Eden's behavior has gotten better since we had Eve. She's really risen to the occasion. Not to say that we don't still have our challenges, like today, when I found myself struggling to keep my patience after repeating, for the 1000th time (today) things like "Keep the sand in the sandbox," and "We only draw on paper." But I try to remind myself that these things are completely appropriate to her age and stage, and not something she's doing to personally drive me insane. I think.

Matt is back at work after 10 days off, and that is going well. I feel 200% more relaxed about him going back at a week with Eve than I did when he went back after a month when we had Eden. I think there are a few reasons for that: she was our first baby and we were new at everything; we had no family nearby, and our good friends weren't ones who lived close; and I'm also feeling better physically, from an easier pregnancy and birth this time around. It's still probably not quite as much rest as we midwives would prescribe our clients at this point in the postpartum period, but on the whole, I'm really blessed to be feeling quite well. And I'm relishing the fact that it's so much easier to do things like get dressed, pick things up off the floor, and chase Eden around. Because any mother-of-a-toddler knows that picking things up and chasing someone around are pretty much the stuff of life at this point.

Interestingly, the transition from one to two children that I was so worried about has been so seamless that it's been almost totally eclipsed by the fact that we're suddenly in the process of launching a homebirth midwifery practice. While it's not exactly the timing I would have chosen, we're doing our best to trust and have faith that all is working out as it's meant to, and that this is what we're supposed to do. I feel lucky to have a family that rallies around me at a time like this, and so between my ever-supportive husband, siblings who are willing to volunteer their time and talents, and my parents' willingness to lend a hand with both girls wherever possible--I'm doing my best to count my blessings, rather than stress about what's ahead. So instead, I try to focus on what fills my days right now: a deliciously tiny and sleepy newborn, and a delightful almost-2-year-old, who still wants me to rock and sing her to sleep and who can't get enough of snuggling her baby sister. When I look at it that way, my heart feels so full, and the days are pure magic.

But I still wish she'd keep the sand in the sandbox.

She's here!

2011-04-26T17:01:00.002-05:00

Eve Lillian Sullenbrand

7 lbs, 5 oz

Born at or around 11am on April 26, 2011
Everyone feeling well and doing great!

36 week comparison & update

2011-04-19T22:50:00.003-05:00

It feels so good to NOT be swollen this time around! I can't speak to why that is--I'd planned to maintain a healthy, low-carb primal diet throughout my third trimester in an effort to keep it at bay, but honestly, that's fallen by the wayside and I'm eating more or less what I feel like eating, pretty much like I did with Eden. But no complaints here! There's also a bit of an angle differential between the pictures, but I think they still confirm my sense that this is a smaller baby than Eden was. Which is just fine--10 lbs, 2 oz leaves plenty of room for downsizing. If this baby follows in her footsteps as far as timing, though, it will be here in less than two weeks! I'm not holding my breath that it will be that soon, but we do have the birth room set up and ready, including inflating the tub--which Eden loves to fool around in.

It's been a challenging couple of weeks around here. Eden is in the midst of some true terrible-2 insanity. Hard-core tantrums are the norm at least several times a day--full-on kicking, screaming, red-faced, sometimes even head-banging-on-the-floor intensity. Sometimes brought on by our unreasonable requests (such as to sit in her chair during dinner or come in from outside) and other times seemingly for no reason at all--like because she woke up in the morning. She does have her pleasant moments in between, but it seems like there's always some raw nerve just waiting to be touched off. I'd like to thing she's getting it out of her system and will be sweet as pie when the baby's born, but that seems like a lot to hope for. At least we have the benefit of four adults in the household (and a few others nearby and more reachable by Skype), because it takes all of everybody's reserves to get through a period like we've had.

Moving forward

2011-04-01T21:44:00.006-05:00

It's hard to believe we've been back in the midwest for three months now! And while the first weeks/months involved a lot of uncertainty, trying to find a new routine, and a general feeling of waiting for things to happen, the sensation now definitely seems like one of forward motion. A few of the highlights...

-Having become certified as a nurse-midwife in Iowa, I've attended my first homebirth here and also several prenatal and postpartum visits. I'm loving the flexibility, creativity, and laid-back atmosphere of this kind of work, especially compared to the hospital; and the feeling that my beliefs and instincts are working in harmony with my job, rather than aggressively having to swim upstream all the time. The sense of relief is indescribable.

-Matt has started work at the natural foods co-op, and couldn't be happier with it. As readers of this blog know, we've longed for a way to participate in the sustainable/organic food movement (beyond just our purchasing dollars) for a long time, and short of growing our own food, this is the best way we've found. He too is enjoying the opportunity to work for an organization of like-minded individuals, who both love food (!) and truly care about it in the same ways that we do. Another bonus: our purchasing dollars go that much further with Matt as an employee, which is an enormous blessing in these transitional times. I've always adored shopping at the co-op (the selection, the crunchy atmosphere) and fantasized about the time when most if not all of our food could come from there--organic produce, humane and local meats--and I'm delighted to say that Matt's job has made this a possibility.

-I'm 34 weeks pregnant tomorrow--this baby could be here in as little as a month! Although when I was pregnant with Eden, who was born 12 days early, I felt bursting at the seams long before this point--and with this pregnancy I don't. So I wouldn't be surprised if this baby hung in there a little longer than she did. But only time will tell!

-We can tentatively say that we seem to have found a place to rent, starting in late summer. While we've loved living with my parents, and Eden especially has thrived with the close proximity to her grandparents, we're respectful of the fact that a growing (and noisy) family of four, which includes a rambunctious toddler and a soon-to-be-newborn, is a lot to combine with a bed and breakfast. Not to mention melding the habits and households of four adults, two cats, and two dogs. I'm happy to report that it's been mostly smooth sailing, but Matt's and my jobs seem to be calling us to a slightly different geographic center than where we're currently located--one that would allow us to resume, if not our folding bike lifestyle, at least one that involves more walking and less driving than we're currently able to maintain. Our new place will also provide ample room for us to have bona-fide "kid-free" spaces, which we haven't had in a long time--meaning we can spend a lot less of our time, uh, helping Eden remember to stay out of things. With another baby on our hands, that can only be a good thing.

-By way of update on Eden herself: she's a lovable, delightful, intense handful. And I do mean handful, complete with terrible-two-worthy tantrums on a rather disturbingly frequent basis. On the other hand? She's pretty much exactly the child I expected to have. Quite honestly, the easiness and straightforwardness of her infancy struck me by surprise, and the current set of circumstances is more like what I'd envisioned from a child of mine. Anyway, on a more fun note, she's becoming more talkative all the time, although it's mostly intelligible to those who spend a lot of time with her and can use context to interpret the words that often sound puzzlingly similar. Some of her more popular homophones:

"MiMi"--can mean music or Mickey (Mouse), both of which she fervently adores.
"Papa/Buppa"--sound similar and can mean Papa (my dad), Grandpa (Matt's dad), pockets (which she also loves), bubbles, potty, apple, and her godmother April
"RaRa"--can refer to my sister's boyfriend, Reggie; water; or flowers
"Eese"--can mean alternately kitties, please or cheese; or, cheese, please
"Nun"--can mean either nuts (which she's absolutely crazy about) or nose (more like "noan," but again, heavily dependent on context).
"Beeps"--can refer to my sister Rebecca, whom we all call Sneebs; to grapes (can sound more like "bapes," but see again above); or to her desire to walk by herself (rather than being carried) up the "steps."

She still uses a fair number of signs to clarify her meanings (thank goodness); some of those include the signs for more, outside, kitties, milk, grapes, potty, etc.

She loves to spend time outside (whatever the weather), to listen to books, and make animal noises (her current favorite comes from a book called "Say Hello to the Snowy Animals," and is her impression of a caribou saying "Huff, huff," which is absolutely adorable and which I really need to get on video soon).

All in all, while each day has its joys and especially its challenges, I think we all feel like we're growing more and more toward the life we're meant to live. Together. And there really isn't anything better than that.

Library book roundup: Parenting books

2011-03-24T21:54:00.007-05:00

Several months ago, I would have said I didn't have much interest in reading parenting books. Parenting Eden as a baby felt a lot like an extension of pregnancy: fairly organic and natural, and tended to unfold in the way that was best for all of us. It felt natural to keep her close, hold her lots, and feed her on demand, and she rewarded us by being a happy, easygoing baby.

Parenting a toddler is a totally different story.

In the old days, I think we would have learned what to expect from young children by being around them. I know the Amish are constantly surrounded by (many) younger siblings, young cousins, nieces and nephews, friends' children, etc, so the transformation that occurs within a child around the time they learn to walk must not come as a surprise to them. On the contrary, Matt and I have few younger siblings, few young cousins, no nieces and nephews, and also relatively few friends with children, and so as a result, the change from sweet, happy-go-lucky and easy-to-please infant to strong-willed, contrary, and sometimes-defiant toddler took us both somewhat by surprise.

A month or so ago, I felt my parenting reserves starting to become exhausted as I constantly struggled to walk the line between cutting Eden enough slack for being, after all, not even two years old, but at the same time, making sure she had what my parents would call "some fetchin' up." Since lifelong exposure to multiple young children and their wise and loving parents wasn't really in the cards at this point, I turned to the next best substitute: books.

In particular, three books that came highly recommended from a variety of parenting blogs were: Easy to Love, Difficult to Discipline; How to Really Parent Your Child: Anticipating What a Child Needs Instead of Reacting to What a Child Does; and Playful Parenting.

Easy to Love, Difficult to Discipline. I found the name a bit cumbersome, but did think that many of the concepts were solid. In particular, the book talks a lot about the idea that it's impossible to teach something you don't know how to do yourself-especially anger management, saying that you can't expect your children to manage their anger well (ie an absence of tantrums, disobedience, talking back, etc) if you haven't yet managed to do that yourself and are setting an example via road rage, losing your temper, complaining about other people, etc. If I'd read the book before I became a parent, I would have found the emphasis on anger management kind of weird. After becoming a parent? I don't know that you can talk enough about how to manage the constant stream of day-to-day frustrations, whether it's having your sleep interrupted, your coffee spilled, your words ignored, your favorite shirt ruined, your conversations aborted, your phone calls hung up on... you get the picture.

How to Really Parent Your Child, interestingly enough, also focuses heavily on anger management. This book is written from a Christian perspective (unlike the above book, which is written from a strongly socio-psychological perspective), which is interesting, because in general I have found most Christian authors to be difficult to read and relate to--coming off as though they have something to prove. This book was quite the opposite--I felt like the spiritual component was a natural and effective complement to everything else he was saying. The author notes how many loving Christian families he's seen torn apart by the intense anger of the children. He notes that in their efforts to "train up their children right," many Christian parents seem to overdo the heavy-handed discipline and under-do the unconditional love. Not that these parents don't unconditionally love their children--it's just that, tragically, their children never get the message that they do. His solution is integrate far more empathy and nurturing into parenting--things, he points out, that come fairly naturally to parents anyway.

This was where I came to prefer the style of How to Really Parent Your Child over Easy to Love. Easy to Love relied almost exclusively on scripted interactions; some of which were helpful, like teaching your children how to resolve conflict with each other by giving them words to use--such as "Don't hit me, ask me to move"--rather than just telling them "Work it out or you're going to your room." I identified with the idea that kids don't show up in the world knowing what's rude behavior, or knowing how to solve problems with each other, and that we adults have to first figure it out for ourselves and then teach them. However, a lot of the language seemed unnatural, and especially they book's insistence that you shouldn't really praise your child by saying "Good girl" or "good job with that," but instead should just neutrally reflect what your child did ("Look, you put away your books"). I thought this approach was a bit rigid and over-the-top. By contrast, How to Really Parent was much looser, and even made the point up front that while some of the approaches in the book might seem new at first, eventually the idea was to go with the flow, your empathy, and intuition, and parent naturally based on an augmented understanding of the way children think (and act, and learn). To me, this approach made much more sense.

Both books also made a point of giving your child the benefit of the doubt, where possible, and seeing them as having positive intent instead of negative. I've found that this especially helps with parenting a toddler--it's easy to see her playing in the dog's water dish yet AGAIN and thinking Boy, she knows better, isn't she naughty! And get extremely frustrated when my barking "Eden. EDEN! GET OUT OF THE WATER! EDEN! NOW! I MEAN IT!" Trying to see her perspective and realizing that her motivations are, more likely, either "Hey, what an interesting sensation when I splash this on the floor and then slide around in it," or "Mommy isn't paying attention to me when I say her name, but she always turns around real quick when I'm in the dog's water, so I'm going to go with what works here" have helped me feel much more patient about physically removing her from the situation (because she doesn't seem to be quite at the point where words are especially effective with her yet) and saying "I know it's fun to play in the water, but Mommy and Daddy have told you NO, and now we're going to clean it up." Whereas before I would have used a much more shaming approach (and oh, how I remember that feeling from being a child--and more often than not, that DID make me want to be naughty and get back at someone!), it helps me now to realize that 99% of what Eden does is not aimed at me personally, to make more work for me or make me mad or whatever--it's to get her needs (for attention, for stimulation, for working out where the boundaries are) met as best she can. I've also found it helpful in dealing with people in general--whether it's a multigenerational household or someone cutting me off in traffic, it's much healthier and more realistic to think things like "They must be in a hurry, I've felt like that before" than feeling like people act the way they do because they bear me ill will.

Playful Parenting didn't especially speak to me, and I didn't wind up finishing the book. While some of the basic concepts--play is how children communicate, connect, and process feelings-- were good reminders, on the whole, I thought it also relied on scripted games and interactions which mostly just felt painfully silly to me. I also thought that it sometimes overly relied on play, to the extent that I thought that as a child of such a parent, I might feel like the parent couldn't be depended on to be serious if I needed them to be. That being said, it helped me understand why Eden feels such a strong kinship with her grandmothers and will sometimes choose them over Matt or me when she's scared or hurt--both are absolutely wonderful about sitting on the floor and playing (repetitively) with her for hours, which is kind of a child's "love language"--and means much more to them than being told that they're loved, or hugged and kissed or even held, all of which are how we would love for her to show her affection, but are a little further along on the developmental spectrum than she is right now. So both Matt and I have made more of an effort to engage in regular and lengthy play with Eden lately, and I think we've both felt like our relationship with her has warmed up considerably as a result.

All that being said, Eden has an intense personality and I still struggle at times with what the right answer is. I also struggle with the idea that we're soon to have a newborn in our midst, and a lot less sleep at night, when right now our first child seems to take all of my time and energy (and then some). Obviously, though, mothers have been doing it for a long time, with children whose needs are more demanding than Eden's, and with fewer helping hands around to do it, and so I keep taking the leap of faith that I'll be given whatever stamina and resources I need to parent through the challenges.

32 weeks: Better this time around

2011-03-21T20:35:00.005-05:00

This pregnancy progresses: 14 weeks, 24 weeks, 28 weeks, 32 weeks

32 weeks last time compared to this time

Almost on the home stretch, I can say definitively that this pregnancy has been so much easier than the last one.
Eden is amazing and I'd endure plenty more for her--she was obviously beyond worth it--but I think I would labor and birth her every day for a week before I would choose to undergo those nine months again. Luckily, this time has been a relative piece of cake, comparatively speaking. From my morning sickness (a reasonable, though miserable, few weeks when I was around 8-12 weeks pregnant) to my symphysis pain (the occasional twinge here and there) to my swelling (no real signs as of 32 weeks, as of which point I was a walking Michelin woman last time), pretty much all of the symptoms that plagued me last time have been dramatically lessened this time. Theories abound: it's because it's a boy, it's because my body "knows how" to do things better this time around...I have no idea on the former, and would somewhat buy into the latter, but my theory is that it's because my stress level is lower. Despite enduring a move from Virginia to Pennsylvania, four months of clinicals, a temporary move back to Virginia (and staying with multiple families) to work a crazy stretch of long hours, then a semi-permanent move back to Iowa to live with my parents, take the boards, and start a new job...despite all that, and having Eden to take care of, I feel massively less stressed out than I did when I was working at the hospital.

Why? There are two primary reasons I think it was so stressful there, to an extent I didn't even realize until I left. The first was the obvious: 12+-hour shifts on your feet in a busy hospital unit are taxing. Fighting constantly with doctors is taxing. Feeling disempowered in your line of work is taxing. I definitely had all of that going on, as most bedside nurses do. And now--I don't!

Second, choosing to have a homebirth when you work in labor and delivery opens you up to all kinds of scrutiny, commentary, criticism, etc. Correctly or not, I felt like my every move (which tests? Who at the birth? What interventions?) was being watched, judged, and evaluated, and I had to choose to either conceal what I was doing (not an easy feat when people are constantly asking, whether out of nosiness or the genuine attempt to make pleasant conversation), or lie, or constantly defend myself. Not exactly gestating in peace. This time around, NOT working in the hospital means that not only am I not not surrounded by a medically-minded atmosphere, but I'm also less exposed to casual conversations with people whose opinions may or may not be valuable to me. Instead, my interactions are largely with family and supportive, midwifery-minded friends. That's all. It's left me free to alternate spells of just enjoying and then occasionally even forgetting my pregnancy. And that has felt like such a gift.

FYI

2011-03-10T20:41:00.001-06:00

I'm back to posting Eden's pictures over at her blog: edenleah.blogspot.com. What can I say-- the girl takes up a lot of space!

What next?

2011-03-03T13:02:00.001-06:00

Fancy outfit

2011-03-02T05:00:00.000-06:00

Going out and coming in!

2011-03-01T05:00:00.002-06:00

Uh-oh!

2011-02-28T05:00:00.000-06:00

Kicking back

2011-02-27T20:07:00.001-06:00

Coming soon...

2011-02-23T12:37:00.003-06:00

Somewhere in the past week or so, I've crossed over from thinking of the birth of this baby as "having a long way yet to go," into feeling like "holy crap, that's going to be here any day now." At 28 weeks, if this baby is born around the time Eden was (38 weeks 2 days), we've got less than 10 weeks to go...which doesn't sound like all that long! There are a lot of things I hope for by the time the baby comes--warm weather to be here, Eden to be fully potty-trained, a space cleared out and set up in which to actually give birth--and 10 weeks hardly sounds like enough time to get it all done. In the meantime, we're enjoying the quiet rhythms of family life we've managed to set up recently--which I'm sure are about to be knocked off their axis by the newest arrival.

28 weeks

2011-02-22T20:59:00.001-06:00

Fun with Daddy

2011-02-22T05:00:00.000-06:00

Hello cow!

2011-02-20T05:00:00.000-06:00

Barrette

2011-02-18T05:00:00.001-06:00

For the first and only time, ever, that she's let us put something in her hair. Her Aunt Kathleen charmed her into it.

Try these on for size

2011-02-16T05:00:00.001-06:00

Helping with breakfast

2011-02-14T05:00:00.000-06:00

Still waking up a little bit...

CHEESE!

While you were sleeping

2011-02-12T19:11:00.001-06:00

Sock scarf

2011-02-12T05:00:00.000-06:00

Under pressure

2011-02-10T18:57:00.003-06:00

Finishing school and not starting my job yet have meant that I have more time than I have since before Eden was born to delve into matters domestic.

My favorite aspect of this realm is cooking, because above almost everything else, we Sullenbrands love to eat.

My mom has had a pressure cooker for the past 33 years, but I can't remember ever seeing it used. So when I got married and registered for kitchen stuff, we registered for a Cuisinart food processor, a KitchenAid mixer, a crockpot, and a slew of pots and pans, but it never occurred to me to register for a pressure cooker. Or to use one. Or what I might use one for.

Well, the Cuisinart and the KitchenAid lived up to my expectations, but I can't say I ever got next to the crockpot. First of all, I found it unreliable. Sometimes things were less done than I expected, necessitating removal to the stovetop and a hasty attempt to finish them before dinnertime. More often than not, they cooked much faster than expected, even on the low or keep warm settings, resulting in a burned-on mess with a barely-edible center. Either way, I never found it to live up to the "set it and forget it" promise that seems to accompany crockpot cooking. Nor did it live up to its reputation for tenderizing things, namely grass-fed meats, the way people promised it would--tough and stringy was more often the disappointing result. It required close babysitting and regular adjustments--not an improvement over the oven or the stove, in my mind. Plus, it's bulky, requires even more advance planning than cooking a regular meal, and lastly, imparts a hot-plastic kind of smell to the kitchen that I find rather toxic and disturbing.

Enter the pressure cooker, which I came across in my mom's cupboard the other day and which vaguely dawned on me as the solution to being busy with a toddler all day, up until about 15 minutes before everyone was hungry for dinner. Simple, multipurpose (cook with it! can with it! marinate in it overnight! use it like a regular saucepan!), and best of all--quick and effective. The first thing I tried was Spicy Shredded Pork, which I'd made several times in the oven as the recipe originally calls for. When I made it in the oven, cooking it for 3-4 hours on low, the results were tasty, but the pork was kind of tough and not very juicy, regardless of how much cooking liquid (or what kind--water, broth) I started with.

For the pressure cooker, I started with a 90-minute cooking time because general pressure-cooker guidelines call for reducing the cooking time in "your favorite recipes" by 2/3. Spicy Shredded Pork originally calls for a cooking time of "several hours," so 1-1.5 hours in the pressure cooker seemed like it should be more than adequate--and I didn't want to risk rare pork my first time out of the blocks.

Here it is marinating:90 minutes later:

And OH. MY. GOODNESS. Absolutely succulent, melt-in-your mouth results from a process that couldn't have been easier.

Pressure-Cooker Pork (adapted from the Pioneer Woman's Spicy Shredded Pork)

-Pork roast (butt, shoulder, whatever--approximately 3-5 lbs, depending on the size of your crowd; but believe me, you'll want to make extra. We ate roughly twice as much of the pressure-cooked pork as we ever did of the slow-baked oven version!)
-2 cups water
-1 large onion, roughly chopped
-Several cloves of garlic
-Splash of white vinegar
-Splash of olive oil
-Squeeze of lime juice
-Few tablespoons each of cumin and chili powder
-Few teaspoons of salt and pepper

Place all but the pork roast and the water in a blender or food processor and blend until it's a chunky paste. Rub onto pork roast, leaving to marinate as long as overnight (you can marinate it right in the pressure cooker if you like) or as little as a few minutes. When you're ready to cook, add water to the pressure cooker, lock on the lid and turn the stove on medium-high. Once the regular starts rocking (don't come a-knocking), reduce the heat to keep it rocking slowly. Cooking time begins now. Cook for 90 minutes (again, I'm guessing you could get away with less, especially if your roast is on the small side), then either let the pressure fall or cool it rapidly by running cold water over it. Pressure is reduced when the pressure valve drops. Carefully remove the lid, remove the pork and shred it with two forks. Drizzle on cooking juices as necessary (not very, in our case, but it comes in handy for keeping any leftovers moist.) Serve with lime wedges, sour cream, tortillas, buns, or whatever strikes your fancy.

You're welcome.

Beef stew is another recipe that we've made often, because stew meat is cheap, and it's a hearty, filling, and healthy meal. It's especially one of Eden's favorites. However, once again, regardless of how I cooked the meat--searing it first, not searing it first, slow cooking it, stovetop-cooking it--it still had a tendency to become even drier and stringier the longer I cooked it. Not a fatal flaw, but not an entirely satisfactory result, either, especially for hours of cooking. BUT. Twelve minutes in the pressure cooker (somewhat akin to seven minutes in heaven!) yielded (you guessed it) succulent, meltingly tender stew meat and perfectly soft, delectable vegetables. Not to mention the fact that you can go from thinking about dinner to having it on the table in under 30 minutes--tell that to your crockpot.

Pressure-Cooker Beef Stew
(adapted from the Presto Pressure Cooker Owner's Manual)
2 pounds lean beef, cut into 1-inch cubes (or 2 lbs prepared stew meat)
2 cups water
1 can stewed tomatoes, undrained
1 chopped onion
3-4 small potatoes, diced
Several sliced carrots
1-2 stalks chopped celery
1 teaspoon parsley flakes
1 teaspoon salt
Sprinkle of black pepper

2-4 tablespoons of flour
1/2 cup water

Sear the stew meat over medium-high heat in the pressure cooker. Add ingredients up to and including black pepper into cooker. Close cover securely. Place pressure regulator on vent pipe and cook 12 minutes with pressure regulator rocking slowly. Let pressure drop of its own accord. Add flour to water to form a paste (depending on how thick you want the stew) and whisk into stew, bringing to a boil until stew thickens, 1-3 minutes. I also add a cup of frozen peas at the end.

You can also branch out into casseroles, desserts, seafood, and all kinds of other things in the pressure cooker. I've got a sneaking suspicion that it just might turn chicken breasts from a dry, tasteless, unappetizing diet food into something--well, better than that. I'll let you know when I test my theory, but know in the meantime that you can cook a whole chicken in 15 minutes, and a chicken breast in just 3-4. You can also cook dry beans in just 3-10 minutes (carefully following the manufacturer's instructions, as beans are one of the foods that foam quite a bit during cooking and so care is required not to overfill the pressure cooker lest the vents should become clogged.) You can cook brown rice in just 10-12 minutes, and white rice in just 5-6. You can make stocks and soups in less than half an hour that taste like you simmered them all day, and you can even cook cheesecake in just 15 minutes!

And SOUP? You'll never have a need for canned soup again when you can make your own from scratch in under 20 minutes. Throw in a chicken breast, a few cups of water, some chopped carrots, celery, and onion, and a little salt and pepper, and you've got it made. If you're really feeling fancy, you can cook some noodles on the stove while the pressure cooker does its thing, then shred the chicken a little and add the noodles and voila, all in about the time it takes to open and heat up a (sodium, soybean oil, and MSG-laden) can:
Are you seeing where I'm coming from yet?! And best of all? These miraculous machines retail around $40-50 and can easily last for generations.

I know one question lots of people have is safety. According to Wikipedia:

"Pressure cookers have a reputation as a dangerous method of cooking with the risk of explosion. Early pressure cookers equipped with only a primary safety valve were at risk of explosion if poorly maintained, allowing food residues to contaminate the release valve. Modern pressure cookers typically have two or three independent safety valves, as well as some additional safety features, such as an interlock to prevent opening the lid while internal pressure exceeds atmospheric pressure. However there is still a risk of explosion, especially if cookers are not thoroughly and regularly maintained in accordance with the manufacturer's instructions."

To further reduce your risk, here's a link to a list of tips for making sure your pressure cooker experience is as safe as it is satisfying.

Here are a few other recipes from the Presto owner's manual:

BEEF POT ROAST
3 pounds beef pot roast
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
2 cups water
Salt and pepper
1 small onion, chopped
1 bay leaf

Pour oil into cooker. Turn heat selector to medium and brown roast well on all sides; remove roast. Pour water into cooker. Place roast on rack in cooker. Season roast with salt, pepper, onions, and bay leaf. Close cover securely. Place pressure regulator on vent pipe and cook 45 minutes with pressure regulator rocking slowly. Let pressure drop of its own accord. Thicken gravy, if desired.

SPAGHETTI MEAT SAUCE
1 pound lean ground beef
1 can (14 to 15 ounces) diced tomatoes
1⁄2 cup water
1 cup chopped onion
1⁄2 cup chopped celery
1⁄2 cup diced green pepper
1 clove garlic, minced
2 teaspoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt

Turn heat selector to medium and brown beef. Stir in remaining ingredients except tomato paste. Close cover securely. Place pressure regulator on vent pipe and cook 8 minutes with pressure regulator rocking slowly. Cool cooker at once. Stir in tomato paste and simmer, uncovered, to desired thickness. Serve sauce over spaghetti. Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese, if desired.

CHICKEN CACCIATORE
3 pound chicken, cut into serving pieces
1 cup diced tomatoes
1⁄3 cup white wine
11⁄2 cups sliced onions
1⁄2 cup chopped carrots
1⁄2 cup chopped celery
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons minced parsley
1 teaspoon oregano
1 teaspoon salt
1⁄4 teaspoon black pepper

1 can (6 ounces) tomato paste

Place all ingredients except tomato paste in pressure cooker. Close cover securely. Place pressure regulator on vent pipe and cook 8 minutes with pressure regulator rocking slowly. Cool cooker at once. Place chicken on warm platter. Stir tomato paste into sauce in cooker. Simmer until thickened. Pour over chicken and serve.

These oranges don't meet with my approval...

2011-02-10T05:00:00.000-06:00

Book Review: Simplicity Parenting

2011-02-08T20:15:00.004-06:00

I recently read Simplicity Parenting by Kim Payne, after seeing it mentioned in a parenting blog post. The book is predicated on the notion that kids today are exposed to

"too much stuff
too many choices
too much information
and too fast..."

and that the result is an epidemic of anxious, materialistic, self-centered children who can't focus or behave. Looking at children today, I definitely think that there's something really wrong, and we have definitely made moves in the past several years to simplify our own lives--so I was intrigued by the premise.

The author makes the point that everything from picky eating to sleep problems to temper tantrums can be caused by an environment that is overly stimulating (electronic toys, video and computer screens, constant exposure to the adult world of conversation, extreme numbers of scheduled after-school activities), causing kids to make an effort to filter out some of the world around them. Hearing the rationale and case studies made me feel really affirmed about some of the things we've already chosen to do with Eden and our future kids: no TV; trying hard to seriously limit the amount of time she sees us using "screens," whether computer, movie, iPod, or phone; minimizing the number of toys and possessions that are around; and, probably most controversially--and this is not from the book, but I did feel like the overall message of the book backed it up--no Christmas or birthday gifts. (We'd rather tie rewards and presents to hard work and good behavior, and make sure that they stay in the realm of "nice surprise/treat I've earned" versus "Wait till Christmas and then I can ask for whatever I want, regardless," and the diminishing returns that come with buying into a consumerist mentality. More on that to come.) It also gave me some fresh motivation and new ideas--like trying to make sure that the space where Eden spends a lot of time is uncluttered and visually restful, and making particular effort to keep our conversations around her positive and uplifting. I feel like the result of all this is, for the most part, a happy, well-adjusted little girl, and it also made me realize that when she's not acting that way--days with temper tantrums and meltdowns and difficulty sleeping well-- that "too much/too many/too fast" is a good place to start looking for the root of the problem.

On the whole, this was a good, quick read, and one that I'd highly recommend, especially to parents or other people working with kids who find themselves up against children with sleep, eating, attention, or behavioral problems.

Quick and tasty microwave popcorn

2011-02-08T20:05:00.005-06:00

image by Ayelie

While there is NOTHING like a batch of stovetop popcorn cooked in coconut oil and slathered with liberal amounts of good melted butter and salt, there are times you want to cut to the chase (ie the butter and salt and eating part) a little quicker than that method allows, without resorting to the cancerous chemical-laden wasteland that is commercial microwave popcorn.

So how awesome is it that you can just pop (haha) some kernels in a brown paper bag, with or without a little oil, and turn on the microwave till the popping slows? We made a good-sized bowl for two in just under three minutes, using an old grocery bag and 1/4 cup of organic popcorn kernels.

How is there an entire microwave-popcorn INDUSTRY when this is true?!

Come on in!

2011-02-08T12:57:00.000-06:00

Belly shots

2011-02-04T19:29:00.003-06:00

Here's a montage of belly shots from this pregnancy (top row) and my pregnancy with Eden (bottom row). Gestations are roughly 2 weeks, 13-14 weeks, and 24 weeks. I don't have quite the time and patience for lining up the time-progressive shots in the same place and the same outfit that I did now (you can see the reason for that in a couple of the top pictures), but I think you can get an idea for the growth involved.

Eden & Scratches

2011-01-31T21:12:00.003-06:00

Also from the Pennsylvania days.

Oldies but goodies

2011-01-30T19:48:00.002-06:00

I don't think I ever got around to uploading these, but they're some of my favorites from late summer when we'd first moved to Pennsylvania.

Bathtime and after

2011-01-27T19:30:00.001-06:00

Eating oranges

2011-01-25T05:00:00.001-06:00

High chair

2011-01-24T21:30:00.002-06:00

Easy Thai Curry

2011-01-24T21:20:00.000-06:00

One of the restaurants I was most looking forward to visiting once we moved back to the midwest was Thai Spice, which has a yellow chicken curry I've always adored.

One day not too long after we got back into town, I found myself seriously craving that chicken curry for lunch in the middle of a freezing winter day. However, it was a little hard to justify bundling up a car-hating baby and driving 45 minutes to get there (only to spend lunch chasing her around the restaurant). After some debate, I decided to take the plunge and try making something similar myself--even though Asian-inspired cuisine is the food that I've probably had the worst luck with over the years. Not feeling particularly optimistic, we picked up a few ingredients at the grocery store and got to work. Surprisingly, the results were delicious, especially given the simplicity of the ingredients and the ease of preparation. We've eaten it a couple times a week for lunch ever since--and haven't made it to Thai Spice yet.

Easy (Primal) Thai Curry

Ingredients:
2 cups sliced meat (I used boneless/skinless chicken breasts the first time, but beef, shrimp, even sausage all work great--or you can do a vegetarian version)
1 cup sliced vegetables (I use onions with the chicken curry; broccoli, peppers
A few tablespoons of oil or butter for frying
2 Tbsp curry paste (I used Thai Kitchen Red Curry Paste, which is available at most grocery stores; one $3 bottle makes us approximately 3 batches of curry)
1 can coconut milk
1-2 tsp fish sauce (I used Thai Kitchen)
Squeeze of lime
Few leaves of basil (Thai or regular)

Over high heat, sear the meat in the oil. When cooked, remove to another bowl, then stir-fry the vegetables. Add the curry paste and stir to coat. Quickly add the coconut milk, scraping the bottom of the pan to deglaze. Return the meat to the pan and add fish sauce, squeeze of lime, and fresh basil to taste, stirring until heated through. Garnish with additional basil and serve immediately. Makes two large servings.

Served as is (without rice etc) it's deliciously warming and filling, high protein, low carb and primal. I've also added a couple of spoonfuls of peanut butter, which is delicious as well.

Braving the cold at Amana Winterfest

2011-01-22T19:11:00.004-06:00

We spent the day out and about at the Amana Winterfest. It was just the thing I'd been needing because the recent sub-zero temperatures have had me feeling a little morose about moving back to the midwest in the middle of winter (or, probably more accurately, with more than half of winter left to go). I'm cold when I'm outside, cold when I'm inside, rocking multiple pairs of long underwear like nobody's business, and fighting the family's dogs for the warm spaces next to the heating vent. Mind over matter helped me stay positive about the cold until it started dipping into the negative double digits. At that point, my mind agreed with my body and said, "To hell with it. This is miserable!"

However, in addition to downing lots of hot beverages (Trader Joe's ultra-rich sipping chocolate and my own homemade chai lattes among my favorites) and wearing a hat, even indoors (a tip from my cold-loving and Wisconsin-born husband), I'd have to say that eating a steaming mug (or three) of chili outdoors and attending a charming winter festival would also have to rank high on my list of ways to beat the cold.

No, she's not a cold-despiser like her mother; Eden just woke up from a nap

Matt enjoying his souvenir mug of chili

($8 for an awesome sturdy mug and 3 fill-ups of chili, coffee, cider, or cocoa)

Eden was a big fan of the chili, too

A quick glimpse of the Ice Princess (not sure who she is or how this honor gets bestowed)

Of course, we couldn't resist!

Crosscut saw competition

Matt in the lineup for the Beard Competition--and as you can see, the competition was stiff (sometimes literally)

We didn't win this year, but I'm sure a blue ribbon is in store in the near future

Regardless, we enjoyed the drive through what we think is one of the prettier parts of Iowa, and it was also nice to get out of the house and enjoy some family-friendly activities. Things can start to feel a little cabin-feverish in our situation, even in the nicest of circumstances, and it was great to have a low-cost way to shake things up a little bit.

Oops!

2011-01-20T04:00:00.000-06:00

Quite an outfit

2011-01-19T04:00:00.000-06:00

New year, new everything

2011-01-17T21:21:00.004-06:00

New location (back in the midwest). New baby (yet to come). Newfound freedom of not juggling being a nurse and student midwife and displaced family anymore...

The past months of clinicals were incredibly hard on everybody. Money was tight, quarters were very close, and we lived in an unfamiliar area with few people we knew (though those we did really stepped up as friends and support people--thanks, Maribeth!) My schedule was crazy, and my being on call close to 24/7 for births meant Matt was a full-time-plus parent and homemaker--a role he fulfilled brilliantly, but I know not effortlessly. I can never express how much his sacrifices and commitment mean to me. Having the opportunity to spend lots of time with Eden these days is something I cherish--but it's also something that makes me marvel more every day at how he managed to take care of this whirlwhind of nonstop energy and incessant demands, within the confines of a tiny cabin, with absolutely NO assistance from anyone, PLUS cook and clean and run errands--for many months on end. He's truly superhuman, and has given up so much in order for me to become a midwife, and I owe him more than I can ever say. We all felt the strain of being pulled in multiple directions, and the only thing more complicated than our life in Pennsylvania was the fact that every few weeks, we packed up and drove down to Virginia for me to work a stretch of nursing shifts. That meant unsettling the baby's routine, two long car rides, relying on the kindness of friends for a place to stay, and 14-hour days watching a crabby baby in unfamiliar surroundings (Matt) or pregnant and constantly on my feet at the hospital (me).

It's amazing now to think that that chapter of our lives--so intense at the time--is just over. It's also amazing to think of just how many people did step up to the plate to try to make our lives easier at that point--April, Pam, Tara and Mark, just to name a few. And of course, our families have been invaluable sources of support and have gone above and beyond in assisting us in our monumental move back across the country. We're thankful to everyone for their kindness and overwhelming generosity, and we're also thankful that another chapter of our lives is beginning.

We've now moved on to a new set of challenges and joys, which everyone is embracing. We're doing our best to keep up with old friendships, and slowly but surely we're starting to forge new. Eden is thriving with her grandparents so nearby, rather than depending solely on two stressed and harried parents for interaction and play. Matt and I have enjoyed the opportunity to reconnect with our siblings, to go to our first movie in over 18 months, and have more than the occasional conversation actually face to face with each other. The benefits of having family close by are even sweeter than we'd imagined, and we're also enjoying the opportunities to rediscover our favorite places in the area--and getting to know some new ones. I'm sure there will be bumps in the road along the way, but in the meantime, we're relishing some much-needed downtime together.

October update

2010-10-14T18:50:00.006-05:00

It's been a long couple of weeks around here. We've temporarily relocated three times in the past two weeks (with one more final move to come next Tuesday), including for a stint of four back-to-back twelve hour shifts for me back in Reston, and that has started to take its toll on all of us--especially Eden. The past few days, she's gone from her usual happy-go-lucky self to a screaming bundle of frustration who has no tolerance for-- well, anything. We were about at the breaking point yesterday, and then suddenly today, she was back to her smiling, giggling self. The only thing I can think of to explain it is that in our desperation, we committed to getting back on track with very regular nap and bedtimes and also more primal eating (the throes of morning sickness sent me fleeing into the arms of carbohydrates, which is about all I felt like I could get down at times). Maybe it's just coincidence, but since she's already doing much better, we aren't going to argue!

Also taking its toll are things like living in an extremely small space together (though we just upgraded to a 2-bedroom cabin, which we're thrilled about--no more litterbox next to the dining room table, or peeing in a cup or frying pan rather than barge through the bedroom into the bathroom and wake the sleeping baby), having few of our belongings, my extremely erratic schedule and sometimes long hours, my fairly constant nausea/vomiting/exhaustion, and the fixedness of our budget, which means few treats or indulgences with which to blow off steam. On the other hand, I told Matt I feel a little like the Israelites complaining about always having to eat manna--back when we were praying hard for a good clinical site and an affordable place to live, we had no idea how closely our prayers would be answered. (He did point out that we're paying for our experience, rather than having it fall from the sky.) Still, it has its uncomfortable moments.

But, on the whole, we're having a pretty good time. Upgrading to a 2-bedroom has already made our living situation seem much less stressful. Eden being in a better mood today has put us in a better mood, too. And fall is coming to Lancaster County, which means cooler weather and gorgeous scenery. As you can see from the pictures below, we're managing to squeeze in some fun of various kinds.

Still, I know we're all anxious for the time when our lives will be a little more stable. When exactly that will be is another issue, since once I'm done here there are still the issues of moving back to the midwest (to yet another temporary living situation), welcoming another baby, starting up a small business, and figuring out countless other things about a brand-new life back in the midwest. However, we're thankful that we'll have lots of helping hands nearby while we feel our way and figure it out.

Reporting in from Beaver Creek...

2010-09-04T09:00:00.003-05:00

We're settling into life in our two-room cabin, and it's going surprisingly smoothly. While we did have to pare down our belongings when we got here and send more than we'd anticipated back with my parents to our storage garage in Iowa, we've mostly got what we need here and have been pleasantly surprised at how un-crowded we feel. Our setup does pose a few challenges; for example, the bathroom is off of the bedroom, and so our choices when Eden is napping are to hold it, drive to the nearest gas station, or wake the sleeping baby (we opt for one of the former). The laundry is coin-operated, and that makes for a considerable investment in quarters when one is cloth diapering. However, Matt has solved that dilemma by bravely handwashing and hang-drying ALL of our laundry. Surprisingly, it really doesn't take much longer! The grocery shopping options are also less varied, but that mainly means that there are fewer temptations (Trader Joe's vanilla ice cream and Pound Plus Dark Chocolate come to mind)-- which is a good thing, since we're trying to make it on a $40-50/week grocery budget that includes plenty of fresh produce, grassfed meats and dairy, and pastured eggs. In the past year or so, we've come to welcome limitations as a good thing in most cases, since we aren't very capable of placing them on ourselves.

I've been to two births so far, one Amish and one non-Amish. The midwifery practice I'm precepting with has been everything I'd hoped for. The midwives are all very different from one another, and I'm excited to think of everything I can learn from them in the next several months. I finally feel like I'm going with the flow, rather than the frantic paddling upstream I've always felt when working in a hospital setting. It's amazing how good it feels--it hardly seems like work at all.

Today, the weather is in the 70s (down from the 90s for the first time since we've been here) and we started the day with a long walk past cornfields, grazing cows, Amish farms, and a one-room schoolhouse. We're planning to go to the farmer's market when Eden wakes up, and run a couple of other errands. We're really enjoying the opportunity to sever some of our previous addictions to technology--by necessity these days, we're checking our email every couple of days or so, have no opportunity to watch TV or movies, and even turn off the radio when we're in the car. While we felt a bit stir-crazy the first day or so, we're settling into a slower pace of life where basic chores like washing dishes, cooking meals, doing laundry, and taking care of Eden are our life, rather than something we have to fit in around it, and I also relish the feeling of not having to compulsively rely on something to entertain me. A couple of recent articles I've read have made me committed to slowing down and learning to actually think and read and focus again (all things that frequent exposure to glowing screens tends to disrupt), and this is certainly a great place to learn how to do that!

Packing up

2010-08-24T17:25:00.003-05:00

It's officially less than a week until we move to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, where I'll spend the next 4+ months catching babies and Matt and Eden will spend long, outdoorsy days getting to know our new home. We're hoping that I'll be done by Christmas, but we've learned not to count on hard and fast plans, since ours have changed so many times--yet somehow always turned out better than we'd expected.

Life is about like this right now, but sub in clinicals, working, babysitting, preparing most of our belongings to go into storage for several months, trying to figure out what to pack to live in a 2-room cabin, and taking care of an insanely active 1-year-old.

It's sad to be leaving Reston and northern Virginia, where we went from a couple to a family and shared so many unforgettable moments. Not only have we walked circles around the trails of Reston with Eden in a sling or a backpack, but she now trots along them herself--obviously a big milestone. She's a native Virginian, and it's the only home she's ever known.

We also made our first "parent friends" here--people who'd only known us as a couple and who came to see us as Eden's mom and dad. They shared the pregnancy, admired our baby, and watched her play with their own babies. Corbin, Poet, Lyon, Max, Grace, Camryn, Asher, Camden and others have been Eden's first buddies too.

It will be especially hard for me to leave my nurse friends at the hospital--but then, it always is. What was supposed to be a temporary job while I figured out what to do next has wound up being a 3-year stint where I've met some exceptionally close friends, including Eden's godmother, who have witnessed my transformation from law school dropout into mother and almost-midwife. They've cheered me on, bared their own souls, and laughed at my filthy jokes. It's been an amazing time.

What's especially hard about moving now is that there's not quite finality to it, since we aren't going from point A to point B (which is Iowa, if I haven't said it out loud yet); we're going to point A-and-a-half first, during which I'll make occasional returns to point A in order to earn a little money, so that I don't really know what will be the last time I see people and so it lacks the epic finality that it did when we pulled down the driveway to leave Iowa the last time. In a way, it's sadder, because we always knew we'd be coming back to Iowa--at least sometimes. Once we leave Virginia, though--probably not.

Happy World Breastfeeding Week/National Breastfeeding Month from Eden and me

2010-08-06T20:11:00.004-05:00

Almond meal pancakes

2010-07-24T19:24:00.006-05:00

This is sort of a compendium of several almond meal pancake recipes out there. Why almond meal? Because since it's made of ground nuts (specifically, almonds--skins and all) instead of grains, it's mostly protein and fat instead of mostly empty carbohydrates. You can make your own, but since trader Joe's sells it for about $3.99 a pound, we opted for ready-made. Having had experience with cooking substitutes before--especially for pancakes, having made egg-free, milk-free, and now grain-free varieties--we were surprised and delighted with how "normally" the almond meal batter behaved. Some sources say to make your pancakes small, since these don't bind quite like regular pancakes, but we made ours in a cast-iron pan and didn't have any trouble at all. We doubled the batch and ended up with about 18 medium pancakes, and had no trouble finishing them off ourselves!

Almond Meal Pancakes

3/4 cup almond meal

2 eggs

1/4 cup milk

2 Tbsp melted butter

1 tsp baking powder

Pinch of salt

Drizzle of maple syrup

Mix all ingredients together, adjusting milk amount until desired texture is achieved. Make pancakes in the usual fashion, cooking over a hot griddle until appearing dry on the top. This method does not result in the same air bubbles that "floured" recipes too, but they do puff up and get less wet on the surface so you can tell when it's time to flip.

Little sicky

2010-07-24T19:10:00.003-05:00

Few things make you feel like a parent quite so singlehandedly as waking up to the hot gush of a child's vomit across your dozing body. Nor subsequently getting in the shower with said child to hose off at 3:00 in the morning. And especially, nothing quite like being the only person in the world that the damp, feverish little bundle wants to cling to.

Eden has the stomach flu, complete with fever. I would probably characterize it as her first real illness other than a couple bouts of the sniffles. Interestingly enough, it directly coincided with the time period where my work and clinical schedule have signaled a distinct downturn in the amount of nursing she's doing, so I'm not really surprised that she's sick for the first time. I've sorely missed the nursing, as well as her in general, so it actually felt really sweet and nice to spend all night and then the entire day with her cuddled on my chest, doing nothing but that and snuggling.

I think she's actually on the mend, since she hasn't barfed since this morning, but she's still quite clingy and hot. Bring on the snuggling and nursing.

Crispy Rosemary Chicken and Oven Fries

2010-07-23T18:36:00.003-05:00

While we love the idea of roasting a whole chicken and using every bit of it, quite frankly more often than not we don't get around to making stock from the carcass (or we do, but it gets shelved in the freezer for months at a time), and plus, good whole chickens are not exactly inexpensive. And now that we're actively trying to prevent having a surplus of things like chicken stock in the freezer before we move, the whole-chicken option was seeming less and less attractive.

Enter chicken thighs. At Whole Foods, we can get a dozen decent-quality, skin-on (and seriously, why would you want them any other way?) chicken thighs for under $7. Looking for a way to cook them, I came across this recipe, which is deceptively simple but amazingly delicious. Of course, we make substitutions--russet potatoes for the red, dried herbs for the fresh, and I leave out the garlic powder altogether, not to mention cooking it for 20 minutes at 475 instead of an hour at 375--but I'm grateful for the basic recipe, which turned us onto something so good we now have it a couple of times a week.

One of my favorite things about this recipe is how the chicken skin slides right off like a crispy, delicious little jacket that you can pop in your mouth as soon as the chicken hits the plate. MMMMMmmmm. One of the keys to really crispy skin, I've found, is rinsing the chicken and then patting it REALLY dry (most people use a paper towel, I use a clean kitchen towel). Seriously, where have these BEEN all my life? It literally breaks my heart to think of all the amazingly tasty chicken skin that must be wasted somewhere in the interested of satisfying the demand for boneless skinless shoe leather chicken breasts. And, I've had oven fries before and found them to be lackluster (as some of the commenters do on the above recipe), but I'm now convinced that that comes from a misguided attempt at trying to minimize the fat content. Liberally drizzled with olive oil, they're tender, flavorful, and delicious.

Here's the recipe, the way that I make it:

Crispy Rosemary Chicken and Oven Fries

6 chicken thighs, rinsed and patted very dry

4 small russet potatoes, sliced in half lengthwise and then into wedges

Olive oil as needed

Sprinkling of dried rosemary

Sprinkling of dried oregano

salt and pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 475 degrees F (190 degrees C).

Pour a little olive oil in the bottom of two 9x13 pans. Place the chicken thighs, skin side up, in one of them, and the potatoes spread out in the other. Drizzle both pans with olive oil and then sprinkle with the dried herbs, salt, and pepper. Cook approximately 20 minutes or until chicken is done and fries are cooked (cook longer for crispy fries).

Hot and sour soup

2010-07-22T18:00:00.004-05:00

We recently ordered a batch of beef bones so that we could make nourishing bone broth, because I was starting to have trouble with my stomach again. Well, we wound up boiling the broth (rather than simmering it) and it was chalky and cloudy and we had to use this crazy method to clarify it. It worked, interestingly enough, so then we were left with several quarts of now-clarified beef broth and had to figure out the best way to use it.

We eventually decided on hot and sour soup, which we loosely based on this recipe and adjusted to our tastes, ingredients, and to fit into our mostly "primal" diet. I'm not even going to presume to give many specific ingredient amounts, because I've realized after following a lot of recipes that people's tastes and ingredients are different enough that the measures are kind of irrelevant and everybody has to adjust them anyway.

Here's how I made it:

(Primal) Hot and Sour Soup

A few Tbsp of lard, butter, oil, or other fat
1/2 chopped onion
1 lb pork of any kind, thinly sliced across the grain
Several large handfuls of thinly sliced green cabbage
A few grated carrots
A pint of sliced mushrooms
A little grated ginger and about the same amount of minced garlic
Pinch of red pepper flakes
Soy sauce
White or other vinegar
1 quart beef broth

Heat the oil in a medium to large saucepan. Saute the onions until golden brown, then add the sliced pork. Cook until opaque. Add the other vegetables in the order given, 3-5 minutes apart, giving each a chance to cook and wilt slightly. Add the ginger, garlic, and red pepper. Pour in a few glugs of soy sauce, scraping the pan to deglaze it as you do. Pour in the beef broth. Add a few splashes of vinegar until the ratio of hot to sour is right. Adjust seasonings and salt to taste.

We thought this was absolutely delicious, and are planning to make a shrimp version this weekend with the remainder of the broth. Bean sprouts (as in the original recipe) would also be delicious.

A year ago tonight...

2010-06-29T20:25:00.003-05:00

...we were settling in for our first night as the parents of a brand-new baby.

We never could have imagined then all the immeasurable ways that Eden would change our lives for the better, and it's impossible to overstate how much richness and joy she's brought to our lives.

We love you, baby girl.

We're still here (for now)

2010-06-20T06:39:00.005-05:00

It's been a long time since I've posted, partially because we've quickly gotten extremely busy, and partly because so many things have been happening and changing so fast that anything I'd planned to post quickly became obsolete before I got the chance.

To make a long and repetitive story short, while I have been able to start getting some GYN clinical hours done and I'm very thankful for that, a clinical site for me to do births has never really materialized in this area. The closest option was doing them at a busy hospital close to two hours away. Both in birth setting and geographic location, this was far from ideal. Going to Clinical Bound strongly reconnected me with why I went to midwifery school in the first place--practicing homebirth. Both from the perspective of providing this option to women and families AND the fact that it nourishes my own soul in a way that I don't think the alternative can. I recently went to the How to Start a Homebirth Practice seminar put on by a local midwifery practice at the annual ACNM conference, and one of the key things they said was that at a certain point, you have to decide whether you want to be a missionary or preach to the choir. Put that way, it makes it sound like there's something noble and romantic about blazing a trail--and maybe there is, but in my own practice, I've found it to be an embittering and futile exercise, full of dead ends. I've concluded that trying to provide natural birth options to women who don't especially want them and in the company of doctors and other hospital personnel who are dead set against them is at best doing no good and at worst, burning me out by spinning my wheels. (Can you smell the burnout yet? It's been lingering in my nostrils for months now.)

So anyway, as we've long admired the Amish and loved taking trips up to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, I was beyond thrilled to find an absolutely amazing homebirth/birth center/ hospital birth practice that agreed to take me on when our lease is up at the end of the summer. Not only is it the holy grail of clinicals, since I get to learn to practice in every possible birth setting, but I'll be doing so from a group of midwives with whom I share at least a majority of philosophies. Not to mention the fact that their clientele (70% old-order Amish or Mennonite)makes *us* look like a bunch of tech-obsessed yuppies in comparison.

Matt and I have actually both found part-time jobs up there as well (farming and birth assisting at homebirths!) and so all that remains is housing. We've actually found that trickier than we thought, but we're trusting that the right thing will come up at the right time. And the plan after I'm done with clinicals (hopefully by mid-December) is to move back to Iowa--back where it all began. Ironically, we left Iowa because I decided to become a lawyer because the political climate there was so hostile to homebirth midwives. Now, we're moving back in part because the laws themselves are actually more permissive than they are in most states (it's a complicated set of circumstances), and I should be set to do what I thought I'd never be able to: help bring little Iowans into the world AT HOME. (Including, I'm sure, a few of our own.) Unlike when we considered moving back a year or so ago (you know, like when I was getting teary just because we were changing apartments), we feel like we're really on the same page about moving and that we're both ready to go. We have some wonderful friends here that we will absolutely miss like crazy (especially you, April!) and that is our one big regret about leaving. Otherwise, though, it's always been our intention for our kids to grow up close to our families (in every sense of the word). Farming on at least a small scale is also still a dream of ours, and seemingly very possible there. And being within a couple of hours of our parents and all of our siblings? Priceless.

Cheesy baked cabbage

2010-05-18T15:06:00.005-05:00

This is the answer I came up with to life without macaroni and cheese.

Cheesy baked cabbage
1 head of cabbage, shredded
6 carrots, shredded
1 stick butter
1 block cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup whole milk
2 tsp salt
1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1 tsp ground red pepper
12 oz sharp cheddar, shredded

Melt the butter over medium-high head in a large saucepan. Add the cabbage and carrots and cook until tender crisp, about 5 minutes. Stir in the cream cheese until melted and vegetables are well coated. Add spices and milk and stir well until creamy. Remove from heat and transfer into a buttered 4-qt or 13x9" pan. Top with shredded cheese. Bake at 450 until cheese is melted and bubbling.

I'm already thinking variations--peanut/coconut curried cabbage, ham-mush-cabbage-casserole...more to come!

As you can see, Eden is a big fan!

Electronic Fetal Monitoring: "An appallingly poor test," says maternal-fetal medicine doctor

2010-05-06T16:43:00.002-05:00

Read why in this excellent article from the Philadelphia Inquirer. I'm not only familiar with this research, but I've seen this exact scenario played out hundreds of times during my four years as a labor nurse. Just another reason we chose (and other families are increasingly choosing) homebirth.

Sugar waxing!

2010-05-06T15:39:00.006-05:00

As you may have noticed, we don't eat much sugar these days. However, I was able to kill two birds with one stone today, one of which was using up some of that lonely sack of sugar we've had in our cupboard for ages.

The other? My need for cheap, sustainable, and effective hair removal. As most people have probably also noticed, this isn't something I've concerned myself with at all for the past, oh, two years or so. I've been rocking out completely natural for about that long in just about every way possible.

However, sometimes circumstances (such as a sister-in-law's wedding) call for a concession to popular culture in the body-hair-removal department. So, the search was on for an appropriate message to do so.

Matt and I don't really own a razor between the two of us anymore, and I've always hated the stubble much more than just having fuzzy legs (obviously). Plus, these days everything is both expensive and ultra-disposable, and neither of those made shaving a route I wanted to take. Back in my footloose and fancy-free days, before I was a mother, I used to enjoy (OK, wrong word) a good wax--eyebrows, bikini line. The hefty price tag meant I quit that about the time we started saving up for our wedding three years ago. I've dabbled with at-home waxing kits, but they aren't especially cheap either--and I always found them rather messy and skin-irritating, and the wax was hard to get off when I was done.

ENTER SUGARING.

my sugar wax cooling in the fridge

I am really that excited about it.

There are a number of different tutorials on sugaring, but I used this one. The basic recipe is usually the same--sugar, lemon juice, water--but some, like this one, utilize cloth strips, while others require cooking the sugar to the "soft ball stage" and then just pressing on the wax itself and pulling it off. The first method seemed a little more foolproof, so it's what I went with. What I did was:

Combine 1 cup sugar, 2 T lemon juice, and 2 T water in a saucepan
Heat over medium until foamy; hold it there (without boiling over) for about 5 minutes
Pour into a heatproof vessel and refrigerate until warm and sticky (about 15-30 min)
Cut an old piece of muslin or cotton into strips
Apply the sugar wax with a spatula to the area to be waxed
Press the strip down 2-3 times with the hair growth
Holding the area taut with one hand, quickly pull the strip off with the other.

Note: I could have probably made about 1/3-1/2 as much and still had plenty to do my legs, but I'm guessing it will keep awhile in the fridge.

Here's what I love about sugaring:

1) It's incredibly cheap--I used 1 cup of sugar and 2 T of lemon juice, plus an old piece of scrap cloth, for a cost probably under $1. Compare that to the ~$60 and upwards you would pay to get your legs waxed, or the $6-10 you'd pay for a home waxing kit, and you're saving some serious money. Even compared to shaving, the weeks of hair removal I'll get from this single sugaring can't be bought for $1 if you're using conventional razors.

2) It's really effective. While there are still stubborn leftovers that require a quick pass with tweezers, this is also the case for professional waxers, who also utilize the tweezers.

See for yourself:

3) It's long-lasting. I can't say yet how long it's going to last for me, but I'd anticipate at least a few weeks, and summer will probably be over before the regrowth gets serious enough for me to contemplate doing it again. What an investment compared to shaving!

4) It's so easy, and there are absolutely zero chemicals involved.

5) I hesitate to use the word painless, but compared with threading, tweezing, and waxing, it's the least uncomfortable method I've ever used, by far.

6) It's SO EASY to rinse off! Just plain water and that's it! Compared with wax, which you have to painstakingly rub off with oil (which then gets on your clothing), this was a total revelation.

7) Unlike shaving, your hair can (and should) be really long to start with! This might be a possible con for those who like to maintain that sleek appearance, but clearly I don't--so it's perfect for someone like me!

Here are some pointers I learned while doing it:

1) The sugar solution is easier and less uncomfortable to spread on when it's warm and runny, like warmed honey. (I used a rubber kitchen scraper to spread it on, and I poured it from the stove to a Pyrex measuring cup for use.) It also doesn't seem to work as well when it starts to get cooler and stiffer. Pop it in the microwave for 10-15 seconds and it will warm right up.

2) The efficacy really depends nearly entirely on how taut you're able to pull your skin before ripping off the cloth strip. For my calf, this meant smoothing on the strip, then using one hand to grab circumferentially around my leg and pull it as tight as possible, then ripping the strip off with the other hand. With, ah, looser body parts, you're going to want a second pair of hands or likely risk some serious bruising.

3) While your legs (or whatever) will look totally hairless, they may not feel as silky as freshly shaven legs will--since it doesn't scrape the surface, there are tiny hairs that may escape the wax, and it also doesn't provide the same level of skin exfoliation that shaving does. But then again, it also doesn't provide the ensuing bumps and redness, either. I had pretty much zero redness/rash following the sugaring of both legs, which is not something I can say for shaving or waxing.

Happy sugaring!!

The summer of slaws

2010-04-30T13:41:00.003-05:00

photo by LaCheryl

I know everybody here is familiar with our (okay, my) fondness for food themes. Hummus, soups, salads, sandwiches, quiche...it seems like not a summer, especially, can go by without one.

I've decided that this summer will be the summer of slaws. I use that term sort of loosely, but basically to encompass the non-lettuce-based, often tangy vegetable medleys we've gotten into as of late. Coleslaw is one; this cooked vegetable hash is another. I found it one day looking for a way to cook brussels sprouts. I didn't expect much, but somehow all the ingredients really came together (especially after letting them rest for about 30min, which isn't called for but made all the difference) and it was just delicious. Here's the recipe:

Brussels Sprout Hash with Caramelized Shallots
6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) butter, divided
1/2 pound shallots, thinly sliced (I used yellow onions)
Coarse kosher salt
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
4 teaspoons sugar (I used a couple of tablespoons of honey instead)
1 1/2 pounds brussels sprouts, trimmed
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 cup water
Melt 3 tablespoons butter in medium skillet over medium heat. Add shallots; sprinkle with coarse kosher salt and pepper. Sauté until soft and golden, about 10 minutes. Add vinegar and sugar. Stir until brown and glazed, about 3 minutes.

Halve brussels sprouts lengthwise. Cut lengthwise into thin (1/8-inch) slices. Heat oil in large skillet over medium-high heat. Add sprouts; sprinkle with salt and pepper. Sauté until brown at edges, 6 minutes. Add 1 cup water and 3 tablespoons butter. Sauté until most of water evaporates and sprouts are tender but still bright green, 3 minutes. Add shallots; season with salt and pepper.

As I think I've mentioned before, having some kind of cooked or cold vegetable dish makes our main-dish salads feel much more filling, and this one definitely functioned that way. I think you could probably give other cruciferous vegetables (broccoli, cauliflower) a similar treatment and it would be just delicious.

The funny thing about all this is that I've never liked coleslaw, potato salad, or other vinegary things until recently. I did love things that were tart and/or sour, but unfortunately my tastes ran more toward things like cherry pie or Sour Patch Kids. Now that I've made the effort to reorient my taste buds toward things that aren't pure crap, I've found that the tanginess of vinegar is amazing in egg salad, coleslaw, or the above "hash." Something else that works well in that role? Sauerkraut. We already eat it alongside our scrambled eggs every morning, and last night we whipped up a spur-of-the-moment skillet dinner comprised of onions, mushrooms, sauerkraut, and thinly sliced hotdogs. Might sound kind of crazy, but it was delicious!

Here are some of the types of recipes I'm hoping to try out this spring and summer:

Cabbage and lime salad with roasted peanuts

Broccoli slaw

Blue cheese coleslaw (scroll down)

Asparagus, peas, and radishes with fresh tarragon

And friends of ours introduced us to a wonderful corn, avocado, and shallot salad which is held together by sour cream and a little lime juice, and which never lasts long around here. We plan on making it at least once a week!

We're back!

2010-04-26T13:14:00.004-05:00

Our trip to Kentucky was absolutely fantastic. While there was more screaming in the car than we'd like to have had (including an especially gut-wrenching hour and a half at the end of the trip home, following 8 hours of angelic behavior, and occurring prior to getting home and realizing we didn't have our keys, a long story I'll not revisit heere)--on the whole, the trip was wonderful and relaxing. I met up with an old (well, 1.5 years, since Frontier Bound) friend and made a great new one, and laughed more and harder than I have in years. Matt and Eden spent many hours together tromping up and down a mountain and through the woods, and we were able to eat three meals a day together (despite bringing much of our own food, we were actually impressed with the Frontier spread most days--seems as though there are a lot of people not eating gluten these days, so protein and fresh fruit and vegetables abounded) and spend most evenings together, too. It was nice to get away and enjoy such a beautiful setting for awhile. And last but not least, in terms of midwifery, Clinical Bound was, like Frontier Bound, incredibly inspiring. I learned a ton, and came back recharged.

Which is good, because I'll need it. The next few months might be somewhat grueling as I attempt to work and do clinicals and Matt leaves his job and we start providing childcare for a friend's baby. It's going to be a number of enormous changes in routine for all of us, and with that will almost certainly come stress. This is compounded by the fact that we STILL don't have a clear idea of where we're ultimately meant to live, or what exactly we're meant to do. We're trying to hang onto our faith, though, that if we just take it one day at a time, we'll eventually figure it out.

Freebies & hitting the road

2010-04-14T08:25:00.003-05:00

We're getting ready to head out tomorrow on the closest thing we've taken to a family vacation-- driving down to Frontier in Kentucky for a week while I attend hands-on skills training prior to starting clinicals. (Oh, how it seemed this day would never come.) Since Eden is still mainly breastfeeding, she and Matt are coming along and we're making it a family affair! We're also planning to camp one night after we leave Frontier--either in the Smoky Mountains or Cumberland Gap, depending on how the whim strikes us after we leave!

Our changes in eating habits are still going along quite successfully--Matt's lost 15 lbs, and I've lost an additional 10 in the past few weeks; for comparison, it took me four months of counting calories and exercising daily to lose the first 10. We're feeling great, our grocery bill has actually shrunk, and we're looking forward to the farmer's market opening next month--at that point, we should be able to get almost all of our food either from there or the local farmer where we get our meat, milk, and eggs. We're also now eating in a way that could essentially be feasible if we were growing/raising our own food, which is a major long-term goal.

At this point, we've sort of transitioned from the GAPS diet--emphasis on bone broths, tight dietary restrictions--to the Primal Diet. I like the Primal Diet for maintenance because it offers pretty logical algorithms for eating--basically, eat like a caveman--versus the GAPS diet, which is a little bit more arbitrary (not that it isn't based on science, but it requires memorizing more than reasoning). From the site Mark's Primal Blueprint, here's somewhat of a breakdown:

Is it Primal?

You know the basics: Lean meats and vegetables are healthy, grains and sugars should be avoided. But what about everything else?

Eggs – Yes (even raw eggs? Why not.)
Nuts – Yes (Almonds, Walnuts, Soaking Seeds & Nuts)
Seeds – Yes
Coconut – Yes, in every way, shape, and form
Coffee/Tea – Yes
Whole Grains, Oatmeal, Brown Rice – No
Beans & Legumes – No
Dark Chocolate – Occasionally
Red Wine – Occasionally
Artificial Sweeteners – Not really, but not terrible [we don't eat these]
Cheese – Not officially, but…
Soy and Whey and Protein Powders – Depends [we don't eat these either]
Chewing Gum – Depends

Here you can read about how this diet works for weight loss, effortless weight maintenance, and why the Food Pyramid results in an average weight gain of 1.5lbs/year for each American. (Hint: it's the 6-11 servings of grains!)

In that spirit, it's somewhat of a bummer that we won't be able to take advantage of many of the Tax Day Freebies--Cinnabon, ice cream--being offered tomorrow, but on the other hand, we look at that as a very good thing. We know our bodies will thank us for it! And,while we've mostly given up on coffee, even decaf, we do partake occasionally as a treat if it's free. And it's certainly a good time for that: we recently got two free cups from Corner Bakery (ongoing), we're going to Whole Foods (good April 14) later today, and are planning to hit several Starbucks (April 15 only if you bring your own reusable mug) on our trip tomorrow.

We'll be back in just over a week!

How are we doing?

2010-04-01T08:54:00.002-05:00

I mentioned in this post a few weeks ago my goals for "spring cleaning" my/our lifestyle. One of the major changes we've made lately is to follow a restricted GAPS-style diet in an effort to jump-start our gut flora. (You can read more about the GAPS diet here, and the importance of healthy gut flora.) What does this look like on a day-to-day basis? Matt's following it more strictly than I am, but here's what we're eating now:

Breakfast:
Scrambled eggs (usually 3 each) topped with a pat of butter. Yum!
Tea

Lunch:
Me: Smoothie with homemade yogurt, frozen fruit, sometimes a cooked carrot or two, and coconut milk (for healthy saturated fat)

Matt: salad and a cup of homemade (chicken or beef) broth

Dinner:
Salad and broth, sometimes some kind of meat or eggs

We've also got probiotic capsules on the way (Bio-Kult) and will be introducing those soon.

We've both been amazed at how eliminating simple carbs and gluten have broken food's addictive hold on both of us. We'd heard people talk about how this way of eating actually made them more satisfied and less hungry, but it's hard to imagine for a couple of chowhounds like us (who really need something this restrictive or else we just give up and splurge). We do get hungry sometimes, but we're more able to make good choices about how to handle it, vs plowing through anything and everything that's available. We've each dropped several pounds and are feeling leaner and more in control. It's a good feeling!

We've also been hitting up the library frequently and I'm happy to report that I've already finished a book for March (The Mood Cure, which I found very interesting and a wonderful easy-to-understand resource on mood chemistry). I'm currently working through Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women and The Politics of Birth, and Matt and I are reading Bill Bryson's (very funny) The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid aloud. As you may recall, we did the same thing with some of his other books and enjoyed that immensely as well. As a result of our rekindled interest in reading, Food, Inc. has been sitting on top of our TV for several days, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

NIH panel on VBAC, or: Give me liberty

2010-03-17T08:57:00.005-05:00

Recently the National Institutes of Health convened a panel to examine the "issue" of vaginal birth after Cesarean (VBAC). Evidence was reviewed, testimonies heard, and a consensus statement released.

While cautiously optimistic that the issue was being reviewed at all, birth advocates had reasons to be concerned.

First, in 2006, a similar panel convened regarding the issue of Cesarean delivery on maternal request (CDMR). What they found was that there was "inadequate evidence to recommend for or against." Which is ridiculous, really, given that the risks of Cesarean to mother and baby are well documented, and they become even clearer particularly when there's not a potential medical indication and therefore benefit (such as resolving fetal distress, interrupting an obstructed labor, etc). So basically, they treated a natural process as having no greater weight than a surgical one and so came out stating that the scales were balanced. The ridiculous presumptiousness of assuming that they know everything there is to know about human labor and birth, that its impact on mother and baby and family and society at the time of birth and forever after is able to be scientifically measured and accounted for--and that even if it were, that the choice is theirs to make-- is outweighed only by the fact that in the case of debating VBAC, vaginal birth (which will happen, come hell or high water, as the natural end of a full-term pregnancy) is treated as the "intervention," something to be "done" as that which needs to be justified, while surgical delivery is treated as the control--the status quo, the "innocent until proven guilty." You can read more on the limitations of that panel's decision here.

Anyway. Henci Goer very cogently articulated the concerns going into the VBAC panel here. The Unnecessarean takes up the other end by articulating the concerns coming out of it. Both are very much worth reading, as are the comments; they contain a good deal of backstory on the lengths that doctors and courts are willing to go to in order to maintain control over birthing women's choices (some particularly sickening facts of court-ordered Cesarean cases, in paritcular), and one commenter shares the following quote from Sheila Kitzinger:

No one would deny that each infant and particularly every maternal death is tragedy to be prevented if at all possible, nor that modern obstetric care, which has developed in the hospital setting, has been at least partly responsible for the dramatic decrease in both maternal and peri-natal mortality over the past half century. But it is not necessarily perverse to question whether our present priority should be to reach minimum figures for peri-natal mortality at any price when this includes giving up things which free human beings have often felt to be more important than their own survival- such as freedom to live their own lives their own way and to make individual choices in line with their own sense of values.

Living out here as we do, in Virginia--home of liberty and rebellion in two major wars, the Revolutionary and the Civil War (not to wander too off-topic, but we recently watched Gettysburg and I was amazed to realize that far from what I learned in history, the Civil War was not about "OMG The South is racist," because the north was, too; it was about whether or not the states had the right to withdraw from a federal government making decisions they didn't feel were in their best interest. I'm inclined to believe that the founders intended that they SHOULD have this right, and so the whole outcome, viewed through that light, feels completely different to me) --I'm struck by the fact that this is exactly what "Give me liberty or give me death" MEANS. It doesn't have to mean death at the hands of the British army--it might mean facing down the (albeit very small) risk of a uterine rupture. Or the right to refuse chemotherapy. Or drink raw milk, or refuse vaccination. People have chosen the risks of freedom over the "safety" of relative captivity here for a long time ("ships are safe in harbor, but that's not what ships are for"), and parents have long been accepted as the proxy decisionmakers for their children, able to elect for one or the other on behalf of those too young to make the decision themselves, but this right is quickly being eroded, now beginning before birth.

So basically, while a small battle or two was somewhat won (recommending that ACOG drop its strict recommendation that only facilities with "immediately available" operating room personnel "perform" VBAC), the war (having any power to compel them to do so, plus the greater--central-- issue of a pregnant woman's right to what essentially amounts to constitutional personhood and self-determination--ie, informed refusal of surgery without regard to whether her physician "feels she is a good candidate") was not.

So. Henci Goer's signature line contains the quote below, which sums up the reaction to this latest news:

“You are not required to complete the work, nor are you free to cease from it.”
Pirke Avot 3:18

Let the work go forward.

Thanks for nursing

2010-03-17T08:50:00.002-05:00

I casually joined the Facebook group "If breastfeeding offends you, put a blanket over YOUR head" some time ago. I only recently learned of the companion blog. They are currently featuring the above printable cards, which I think are completely awesome. I will probably print some out to have on hand, even though I think I have only seen someone else breastfeeding in public ONE TIME. Oh, well--it never hurts to be prepared.

What should you do if you come across a nursing mother and you don't have one of these at the ready? Make eye contact and smile at her. That's all. Don't: a) stare, b) grimace, c) say something rude, or d) hastily avoid eye contact and shield your children's/husband's eyes like you've just caught her urinating.

If all else fails--just ACT NORMAL. There's a crazy thought, huh?

Spring goals

2010-03-16T09:40:00.002-05:00

One thing I meant to talk more about in my last post was cutting down not just on coffee, but on a variety of other substances that I find to be rather addictive. They're nothing earth-shattering; sugar is one, BAKED GOODS are another. Someone brought banana bread in to work the other weekend and I wound up polishing off half the loaf, knowing while I was doing so that it wasn't what I wanted to be doing. Even decaf coffee kind of functions that way--I find myself downing it mindlessly, then craving more. Whereas when I drink tea in the morning, it's more like "That was nice, now I'm done." There's a certain kind of reaction I have to particular things that keeps me from making level-headed decisions about them. Television and the internet are another. The kind of slothful, bloated, I-know-I-should-get-up-or-do-something-different-but-I-can't-make-myself feeling that I really don't care for. I love spontaneity, but there's something to be said for intentionality as well.

The antidotes? Again, nothing mind-blowing. Eating "decent food" that lacks such a strong binge potential. (Generally easy for me at home, where I plan the meals; much harder when I'm somewhere else with unlimited junk food!) Going to bed early (staying up late--another addictive practice) and even a little hungry now and then. Getting plenty of activity and exercise. Sticking to a routine and keeping the apartment as neat as I can. I'm happy to say that I'm back to my pre-pregnancy weight, but in a way, that's removed my impetus to exercise. I'm happiest and most energetic when I do, though, so I need to find a way to keep that up. I'm trying to spend less time on my computer in the evenings, since school means I spend a lot of time that way during the day.

Another way to engage in the real world in a mindful way is by reading actual BOOKS (and magazines). Even most of my course readings these days are online, and so actually holding a book and turning the pages are activities that have threatened to become obsolete for me. I've found this tends to make me rush, feel a little bit hyper, skimming to get through something versus reading it in order to know it or enjoy it. I see this tendency in myself and I don't like it. So I'm making an effort to check out books from the library, and I've actually changed two online subscriptions (great for reducing clutter and waste, but somehow not as satisfying or durable) to print (Mothering magazine and Midwifery Today).

Luckily, spring is coming and I'm also on break from school, so it should afford me some good chances to continue to energize my routine and myself. I've always liked doing seasonal rather than just new year's goals too, so in honor of the warmer weather, here are my spring goals:

1) Keep exercising 5 days a week
2) Go to bed before 10 and get up before 6:30
3) Keep tracking calories with The Daily Plate and avoiding addictive triggers like coffee, sugar, and baked goods
4) Stay off the computer in the evening
5) Read a book a month

Let's see how I do!

Slump lifted.

2010-03-05T15:30:00.002-06:00

I'm pleased to say I pulled out of the slump I was in a few days ago. I let myself slump for the rest of that afternoon, then started strategizing about how to fix it.

One thing was setting a couple of concrete goals for the next day: I WOULD get up when my alarm went off, and go work out. I WOULD finish the chapter of notes I was working on. Taking "do I feel like it?" out of the equation seemed to help, and I did, in fact, do those things. And those successes gave me a boosts in other areas.

Another element was analyzing where my energy drains were coming from. One was getting lax about bedtime. For awhile I was pretty consistently going to bed before 10pm. Then I started picking up more evening shifts, staying up later, sleeping in later, then staying up later, etc. I'm working on that.

The other was caffeine. Matt and I switched back to caffeinated coffee around the time I went back to work, because I was up late working until 1 or 2am many evenings. One cup turned into two, turned into a couple of cups in the afternoon, until we were making a whole pot and drinking it every day (sometimes more). We figured out that at our peak, I was drinking around 6 cups a day and Matt was drinking closer to 10. I told him I remembered how after Eden was born, even though I wasn't sleeping much, I still had a ton of energy. I told him that I haven't felt like that for awhile.

The first day was hard. Talk about a slump. I oozed around the apartment with a throbbing headache and zero energy. Day 2 (yesterday) was better. Day 3 (today), I again have a headache, but my energy level is coming up again. I'm optimistic it will get even better.

So what do we drink in the morning? We started with tea (herbal or decaf), which is warm and tasty, but recently we stumbled onto Vanilla Steamers, and boy, are they good. A cup of warm milk, an egg yolk, a splash of vanilla, a sprinkling of cinnamon, and just a little maple syrup. It's like hot chocolate, but vanilla. Kind of like warm eggnog. Creamy, dreamy, nourishing, and filling, I think they're better than coffee. Even better still? We can also drink them before bed. Eden is a big fan, too!

Visit from Grandma Mary

2010-03-03T21:09:00.002-06:00

We had a great time with Matt's mom this past weekend. The hardest thing about living out here is being so far from our families, but we're always so excited when they come to visit, and we were happy to see that Eden had no trouble remembering who she was and having a great time with her!

2010-03-02T15:45:00.002-06:00

The last few days have found it really hard for me to concentrate on schoolwork. I don't know why. Remarkably, I have felt able to get things done around the house (which is a blessing, since one of our cats has been throwing up on the carpet after each feeding, and today while I cleaned that up, Eden found my full cup of coffee and "sent it sailing," as my mother would say, further adorning our cream-colored living room rug). It's just when I try to sit and get work done that I feel antsy. Probably some senioritis, since this is my last term of only classes; probably some spring fever; and probably some of the inertia that comes with being just past the middle of the term.

So I'm set to start clinicals in May. Here in Virginia. Our plans have changed about this so many times that I don't even know where to start. At the beginning of this year, we thought we felt the call to move back to Iowa, stay with my parents, and do my clinicals there. While part of me was brokenhearted to leave Virginia, part of me was thrilled to move back closer to our families, and almost all of me was thrilled to finally have things settled. A few weeks into it, however, one of my sites dried up and the other became...less than enthusiastic. The logistics of melding our household (two adults, a baby, and two cats) with my parents' (three adults, two to three dogs, and a business) started to seem increasingly difficult. Jobs did not appear promising. Finances began to look daunting. The final straw was finding out that despite the fact that I'm scheduled to attend Frontier's weeklong clinical preparation session (known as Clinical Bound) in April, if I didn't start clinicals within 16 weeks, I'd be required to repeat it (not easy or cheap). Getting started--and, of course, also finished--sooner started to seem like an imperative.

Making phone calls to find a preceptor around here didn't go much better this time than it had the first, but I did find a place doing office visits with a women's health nurse practitioner (allowed for certain elements of clinicals if a CNM can't be found) I know, and I'm thrilled about that. A close friend has agreed to watch Eden one day a week, so I'll know she's in good hands, not have to be away from her too much (other sites I'd talked to wanted me there full time), and still be able to work. Matt will be able to keep his job into the summer and so our finances should be all right. I've found a hospital in Maryland where I can start doing births starting in September, and from what I can tell, I should be able to finish up around December. That's a nice idea.

It's frustrating not to know what we'll be up to after that, but we're trying to resign ourselves to it. Every time we've tried to plan ahead, we've been brought back firmly in check by a change in circumstances. Evidently we're meant to live one day at a time, quite literally. This has put a strain on us, and our families and friends, but we're doing our best to deal with it.

I've been thinking lately about our diet. While overall it's quite good, I daresay better than most, it isn't perfect. We each have our own chronic health concerns that are not entirely resolved, and having Eden start eating table foods versus just effortlessly receiving perfect nutrition we don't have to think about has made me want to give her the very best start I can. Things like the GAPS program or the Maker's Diet seem to make intuitive sense to me, but we haven't figured out anything definitive yet. More on that journey yet to come.

Here's what's going on out here...

2010-02-09T19:09:00.001-06:00

My "duh" file is getting full: Cesareans increasing, more women dying

2010-02-05T10:15:00.004-06:00

photo by aka Quique

An increase in the number of (unnecessary) Cesareans means more women are dying, unnecessarily. Like so many other facts of modern life (don't get me started), a lot of people would like to see this information suppressed or distorted. But there it is. A striking quote from the study of maternal deaths in California: the current trend represents “the most significant spike in pregnancy-related deaths since the 1930s…it’s more dangerous to give birth in California than it is in Kuwait or Bosnia.” Don't think the problem is just California--they're just the first ones to be honest about it.

So much for the lifesaving benefits of modern medicine, so frequently touted when the safety of homebirth is questioned, as it often is in the media these days.

Kind of makes that live elective C-section on the Today show (the one the doctor characterized as "orderly, routine and scheduled for this timeframe, just the way these are supposed to go...as happens at countless hospitals all over the country,"--indeed) seem a little in poor taste. The doctor in this case notes that the Cesarean was scheduled--mind you, with no "trial of labor" first--"because in both of their families, babies run big and she was past her due date and those are two indications that a cesarean section is a lot safer than having a vaginal delivery."

I'm sorry, what?! With countless increased risks of morbidity and mortality to both mother and baby, there are VERY few situations in which a SCHEDULED ELECTIVE PRIMARY CESAREAN TO A HEALTHY WOMAN CARRYING A HEALTHY FETUS is "a lot safer than a vaginal delivery." As a matter of fact, her own professional organization notes that "the evidence does not support prophylactic [ie scheduled] Cesarean delivery for suspected macrosomia [large baby]," and studies have estimated that it would require over 1,000 such Cesareans to prevent one permanent birth injury (generally the concern over giving birth vaginally to a large baby). Even more sobering, if such a policy of rampant unnecessary Cesareans were enacted, for every 3.2 brachial plexus injuries (the most common birth injury, a kind of nerve damage to the arm) prevented, one maternal death would occur due to the complications of Cesarean. And I don't think there is a professional out there who could give you any kind of support for the statement that going past a woman's due date (or guess date, as it is sometimes known--because the 40-week mark is simply the midpoint in the normal "due month," which encompasses full-term deliveries anywhere from 38 to 42 weeks) is an indication for scheduled Cesarean.

Bad, bad medicine. And women are dying, literally, to bear it out. It makes me want to scream.

Meredith Viera (who gaily tells the woman that SHE had a Cesarean and so knows that she'll be "on her feet in no time") notes toward the end of the show, "They chose the right way to deliver, that’s sure… by c-section."

I'm sure glad I chose the WRONG way to deliver my 10-lb (2-oz) baby--one that isn't contributing to the rising toll of dying mothers.

Saturated fat: Does a body good

2010-02-05T09:23:00.008-06:00

photo by Vicious Bits

First BPA, and now it gets even better. We'll just call this the winter of our vindication.

As evidenced by our shift to a diet heavy in cream, lard, butter, cheese, half-and-half, and whole milk, we came to disbelieve the association between saturated fat and heart disease awhile ago. Up until now, despite the fact that the science said otherwise, this mentality was considered pretty out-there and fringe-y (mainly because nobody was looking at the science, just parroting what they were paid to say by special-interest groups). Well, this morning at the gym I saw on the news that the mainstream media has finally picked up on the fact that studies have shown that there is NOT a link between saturated fat intake and heart disease. While "scientists" still rush to tell people to "increase their intake of vegetable oils," nonetheless, at least the beginnings of the truth have been sounded.

Food Renegade is one of my favorite health writers, and she explains here and here and here why the "low-fat (especially low saturated fat) = healthy" mantra is a myth. While the media hasn't yet gotten this far, the next step in all this is to understand why high cholesterol doesn't "cause" heart disease--AKA the "lipid hypothesis." You can go here to read one researcher's explanation--that cholesterol IS present in the arteries of people with heart disease, but only in the same way that firefighters tend to be present at fires. As she puts it, it would be ridiculous to blame the firefighters for starting fires simply because they always show up there! Instead, the role of cholesterol in repairing inflammation (caused largely by sugar and free radicals) explains why high levels of lipids are found in those with damaged arteries. It also explains why drugs like statins lower cholesterol, but not mortality. And, it explains why so many people's ancestors, like mine, lived to a ripe old age "despite (as doctors would have us believe) eating eggs every day, spreading lard on their toast, etc etc. In fact, it turns out that those humble, traditional foods are probably the exact reason WHY they lived to a sharp, active old age.

For me, seeing this on TV this morning was especially timely because our hospital's health fair is today and I was planning to pop by after the gym to get my cholesterol, blood pressure, and blood sugar checked. (Being part of a sea of people, with easy access to a number of exit points, is about as close as I like to get to the medical establishment.) I was practically jumping up and down with anticipation to see what the numbers would be, given my switch in the past few years from a lower-fat, vegetarian diet to a traditionally-based one that includes a lot of saturated fat.

Total cholesterol: 162
(Ideal: less than 200)

HDL ("good" cholesterol): 56
(Ideal: greater than 50)

LDL ("bad" cholesterol): 2.9
(Ideal: less than 3.5)

My random blood sugar was 86 (ideal: 70-14), reassuring given that I could be considered at high risk of diabetes based on my chunker of a baby. And finally, I was pleased to see that my blood pressure was normal because it has been elevated in the past (during nursing school, for example) and high blood pressure runs in my family. However, I was not surprised to see that it had normalized, as we have recently become believers in some of John Sarno's theories about psychosomatic links to pain, chronic illness, and hypertension, and feel that exposure to his work has helped us become healthier than ever. As was long the case for the contention that saturated fat does not lead to heart disease, Sarno's work has yet to be accepted by mainstream medicine--but to us, that's just one more reason to give it a closer look.

You mean BPA is dangerous?

2010-01-18T09:33:00.002-06:00

We thought so. And now we know so. Too bad there's "nothing that can be done about it," huh?

Are women's bodies broken and defective? Just ask your TV.

2010-01-18T07:59:00.004-06:00

Most people know that we don't expose ourselves to much media around here. However, we get a snippet here and there, and more often than not, we're disgusted with what we hear.

This morning at the gym, I happened to catch a glimpse (sound turned off) of this segment on Good Morning America. (GMA happens to be the show that visited my hospital, spoke with one doctor, refused to speak to nurses, and then "spoke out" on the "dangers of doulas.") What seems to have happened is that a Haitian woman went into preterm labor at 32 weeks. American doctors suspected that the baby was lying transverse and thus unable to delivery vaginally. There were also signs that her uterus was becoming infected. A flurry of text messages later, they managed to get her to a field hospital, where it was discovered that the baby was actually head down, in a fine position for delivery. She subsequently delivered her baby vaginally, and, it seems, fairly uneventfully.

Watching this clip with the sound off, I was struck by the imagery. Poor, third-world, black pregnant woman splayed out in front of the TV cameras while white men all over the world exchanged electronic missives about what to do with/to her. She's rushed off to lie flat on her back in a hospital bed in a tent, an Israeli field hospital with, of all things, electronic fetal monitors strapped to her. Where did those come from? Why would they have a machine that not only costs thousands of dollars, but doesn't improve outcomes? When periodic listening with a fetoscope--or in times of need, an ear against a pregnant woman's belly--can tell you what you need to know?

The message these pictures spoke was: women's bodies are trouble. They're defective. They're ticking time bombs. And they need men--wealthy white men, judging by these images--and their machines to save them.

Despite the fact that the birth was eventually effected with very little technology (which I couldn't tell from the clip--to me, it appeared that she underwent a Cesarean, but she must have just given birth in a room that looked like an OR), ABC News still managed to worm in a statement of how OMG SHE WOULD HAVE DIED if she'd had her baby at home:

The mother is doing well, despite having experienced preeclampsia, a leading killer of pregant women in Haiti, shortly before giving birth. And when Besser spoke with the doctor who delivered the baby, he said that the earthquake, ironically, likely saved the lives of both baby and mother.
"He said that had she delivered at home, both the mother and baby would have died," Besser said.

I'm sorry--would have died of what? The cure for preeclampsia is not drugs. Not surgery. Certainly not Blackberries and television cameras! Just one thing: the birth of the baby. Which her body had already initiated (go figure) and eventually completed.

It's not the only time the media (hey, ABC news again!) has recently glossed over the facts to present us with the idea that things can go wrong at the drop of a hat and you'd better be in a hospital--just in case. Exhibit B: the Christmas Miracle Mom.

Only, maybe not so much. It's interesting how the American Medical Association and ACOG seem to have infiltrated the media in recent years; how a story involving a cardiac arrest following an epidural turns into doctors saving the life of a woman whose pregnancy mysteriously tried to kill her. Interestingly enough, just a few years ago, MSNBC ran a story about a young mother who died following a "routine" induction and epidural. It actually happened in DC, at a hospital where several of my friends used to work. I thought the article did a good job of avoiding conjecture and finger-pointing; it just reported the sequence of events, which pointed to the fact that an epidural killed Julie LeMoult.

Does that happen often? No. But it does happen. Similar to the risks of homebirth, (though different in the important respect that one is a major, elective medical procedure and the other is normal life event), the risks are rare, but there. However, while there's probably not an OB in the country that wouldn't argue for a woman's right to have a large needle, anesthetic, and narcotic injected into her spine in order to birth her baby, their professional organization is fighting tooth and nail to limit a woman's right to bring her baby into the world in the location of her choosing, despite the dissent of some of their members.

And today, what you hear are grim statistics, implicitly chalked up to out-of-hospital birth:

A woman in Haiti has a 1 in 44 chance of dying from childbirth in her lifetime, according to the World Health Organization. The comparable statistic for the United States is 1 in 4,800.

Part of the problem may be that even in the best of times, medical resources may not be accessible to many Haitians.

"About 80 percent of the population delivers outside of the hospital on a good day [in Haiti]," Moritz said.

A number of European countries have higher rates of out-of-hospital birth than the United States--and better maternal mortality rankings, by far. So clearly place of delivery is not the only factor here. Perhaps the women's bodies there aren't as defective as they clearly are here, or in Haiti? Or just maybe, they haven't been led to believe that they are.

Pregnancy and birth are neither where it begins, nor where it ends. They just tend to be where it's most visible. However, society's disdain for the female body crops up in other places, too. Breastfeeding, for example. It's a well-worn example that women's breasts are OK everywhere, as long as they're being used to sell sex (or anything else) and not to feed a baby. Women's bodies are cheap commodities for commerce and decoration--not something powerful and useful (let alone something men can't do! Gasp!) like nurturing another human being!

Menopause is another example. On the way to the gym this morning, coincidentally, I happened to hear an assinine spot involving a male DJ talking about one of his friends' wives who was going through early menopause. He went on to discuss how disgusting and abnormal this was, how she was probably a "sweaty mess," and how MAYBE his friend would stick around, but if you were "just dating" someone, the menopause would probably be a reason to "hit the road." "You add PROFUSE SWEATING to ALL THOSE HORMONES?" he said. "Come on!"

The message: women's bodies are gross, they're only good for one thing, and when they're not good for that thing anymore (as deemed by men)? Hit the road.

Come on indeed. This makes me all so furiously sad, now not just for myself and the other women out there, but because I now have a little girl. A little girl whose tiny body has miraculously transformed from 10 pounds of sweet melting baby fat into a sturdy 17 lbs of muscle and mobility, and which I know will someday be capable of further miracles. Like the one that grew and nourished her, and safely birthed all 10 lbs of her with little more assistance than a tub of warm water. And I plan to fight tooth and nail to safeguard her belief in herself and the integrity and power of her body.

Are women's bodies broken and defective? Far from it. But our view of them certainly is.

A happy new year.

2010-01-15T15:04:00.005-06:00

Two weeks into the new year, I feel like we're in a very nice place. Certainly better than last January, when I was starting to get big, down with a cold, and lacking in energy. This year, instead of an expanding midsection, we have an ever-more-delightful, affectionate, silly and wonderful little person around.

We're settling into a nice routine, too; during the week, we get up around 6, I go to the gym for an hour, and Matt hangs out with Eden. I come home, and we spend time as a family until Matt leaves to walk to work. In the evenings, Matt usually does some woodworking, I do some homework, and after we put Eden to bed, we cap it off with an episode of Lost (two episodes on the weekends). On the weekends, I go to work, Matt and Eden have a daddy-daughter day, and we take it easy in the evenings. I feel so fortunate to have been able to rearrange my work schedule around my daughter's teething. I'm actually training up on the postpartum floor as well, to get a few more weekend hours, which is nice.

Eden is also getting bigger and a little more predictable (despite her increasing mobility). Plus, I think we're getting used to her. The more we settle into our life as parents (versus focusing on what we used to be able to do--you know, like sleep in, or have an uninterrupted conversation), the happier we are with it.

Things just feel peaceful and quiet these days--the calm before the storm. We're thankful for both.

Happy New Year!

2010-01-02T13:35:00.003-06:00

Compared to my post about Christmas, which was celebrated on the 23rd and not posted till the 31st, my January 2nd new year's post is downright timely. Not that there's a whole lot to say about it; we spend New Year's Eve at home with Eden, who went to sleep around 9pm, while we stayed up watching Lost on DVD. Like with The Office, we're pretty much the last people on earth to discover both shows and now we're just as obsessed as everybody else, except we're about two years behind. Nothing wrong with that!

We also made homemade spaghetti and meatballs, which always tastes so deliciously decadent as to be well worth the small investment of time that it requires to make it. Since our discovery of BPA in a can, and having used up most of our frozen tomatoes, we've switched over to fresh tomatoes in all of our recipes that call for canned. It's a little more expensive, and it can't be called seasonal, but to us, it's worth it. In this instance, it worked quite well.

Besides marking our last New Year's in Reston, 2010 is going to be a big year for us. It appears to be the year we'll move back to the midwest, meaning the end of our current jobs and housing and the seeking out of new. Eden's first birthday, the beginning of my midwifery clinicals, and who knows what else will be other highlights. It was supposed to be the year I finished midwifery school, but it now appears that I'll do that in 2011 instead. Which is just fine with me. In all other ways, we're coming so much closer to accomplishing our dreams than I'd ever hoped we could, that a delay of a few months really doesn't matter at all.

Meanwhile, we're happy right now just to be exactly where we're at. Eden is growing and developing by leaps and bounds every day. Last night, while I was nursing her to sleep (or trying to), she somehow wrangled herself into a position perpendicular to me, worked her legs underneath her, and straightened them, so that she was standing up, bent at a 90-degree angle, still latched on. She's a lightning-fast army crawler and is already imitating sounds we make, making us feel like walking and talking will be here before we know it. Today at CVS, we reached two milestones: we bought her first toothbrush (a tiny yellow Sesame Street number--how impossible is it to buy a child's item that doesn't have some kind of marketing on it?!), and I also sat her in the front of the cart. Having only ever held or worn her in a store, it was amazing to look down and see this tiny, distinct person sitting in a little seat, little legs poked out through the holes, and of course trying to grab and mouth everything that went past her.

Today we also ordered some books, making use of generous gift cards and other funds given to us for Christmas (thanks, everybody!). For Matt: The Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live it. For me? A few too many breastfeeding books, so seductive because (like pregnancy and birth books) I can justify them as part of my "professional library." Including:

Child of Mine: Feeding with Love and Good Sense
The Food of Love: The Easier Way to Breastfeed Your Baby
Ina May's Guide to Breastfeeding
Breastfeeding Made Simple: Seven Natural Laws for Nursing Mothers

And, for Eden: What Baby Needs. While it's about the anticipation of a younger sibling, and we don't need that quite yet, we know someday we will and it seems like many of the more naturally-minded or breastfeeding/homebirth-friendly children's books (I am Made of Mama's Milk or Welcome With Love) go out of print quickly and then are quite expensive used. This one was under $5 shipped, and so I figured it was a bargain. Something I didn't get, but totally loved: these nursing animals (pig, cat, and dog) which have babies who "nurse" by magnetically attaching to their mother (which I'm sure is how all nursing mothers have felt at some point). Awesome! I remember how much I loved Puppy Surprise as a kid, and this is even a bit more biologically sound than dogs whelping via a Velcro abdominal pouch. (And who knew, anyway, that there were so many Surprise iterations that followed?)

So anyway. We're happily anticipating what comes next, enjoying where we're at, and already watching our baby girl grow up. And learning that, unlike the proverbial pot, she'll continue to grow and change incredibly quickly no matter how closely we're watching.

Christmas!

2009-12-31T07:56:00.004-06:00

I figure that so long as I post our Christmas pictures while it's still December, I'm not too far behind, right?

We actually celebrated our Christmas on December 23rd, because I was scheduled to work overnight on the 24th and 25th. Well, I actually ended up working the 22nd and 23rd as well, thanks to Matt's generous offer to cook the entire Christmas dinner (and clean up after himself!) and watch Eden all day. He did, and I can't imagine things going any better than they did!

Our menu for Christmas dinner was as follows:

Spice-rubbed roast beef
Country Potatoes
Green bean casserole
Buttered corn

The roast was one from the half steer we split with Pam's family earlier in the fall. The recipe we used was one from the Grassfed Gourmet Cookbook, an excellent and artistic book that contains all you need to know about cooking succulent grassfed meat (for example, cooking it "lower and slower" than you would grain-fed beef). This particular recipe involved rubbing the meat with a combination of spices (including cardamom and cloves, which we chose specifically because it seemed especially Christmasy!) and then roasting it at the super-low temperature of 180 degrees. It came out absolutely perfect--tender, juicy, medium-rare, and with just enough spice to lend flavor without covering up the beef's own deliciousness.

The Country Potatoes are a recipe that Matt's mom makes for get-togethers which Matt and I are absolutely crazy about.

Country Potatoes

2 # frozen hash browns (we used two pounds of peeled, cubed potatoes. They didn't cook up quite as tender as we would have liked, so I think next time we might boil them for just a few minutes before assembling the casserole)
1/2 c. shredded cheddar cheese
1 c. sour cream
1 can cream of chicken soup (we actually just halved this recipe)
1/2 c. chopped onions
1 stick melted butter
1-1/2 c. corn flake crumbs (we used about two cups of torn bread crumbs, since we're all about croutons)
4 T. melted butter

Mix hash browns, sour cream, cheese, soup, onion and 1 stick melted butter together. Pour into 13x9 inch pan. Mix corn flake crumbs and 4 T. melted butter together and spread over the top. Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour. Serves 12 (haha)

Utter deliciousness.

For the green bean casserole, we went the easy route and bought French-fried onions (though we've made them before) and used the recipe off the side of the can. We did make our own cream of mushroom soup, though.

We also had a delicious organic red wine with the meal, made better by Pam's introducing us to a wine aerator. It was a total revelation, especially to someone like me who in the past has had to work to enjoy red wines (not anymore!). It really mellows and softens the sharp, bitter edge that red wine often has to it, and we're definitely glad to have one of these on hand!

Here are a few more pictures from Eden's first Christmas:

All in all, we had a wonderful evening. It was simple, quiet, and shared with each other and one good friend. There were gifts, but no extravagance; there were also no obligations, no sense of "we should invite so and so" or anything like that. Just sincere, genuine, and heartfelt. While we missed our families, that was also allayed by the knowledge that next year we'll be nestled about as closely in the bosom of our families as possible, so we were able to enjoy this one quiet Christmas together, and appreciate it for what it was.

Cooking with squash

2009-12-21T20:23:00.006-06:00

I've never been a big eater of vegetables. I've tried to browse the grocery store or farmer's market, and just pick up something in season (like hmm, kohlrabi? or so I hear it's beet season), and go home and cook it. Last time I tried that I ended up with the Swiss Chard incident, and there have been a number of other attempts that were equally unsuccessful.

So I'm not really sure what possessed me to pick up a butternut squash and bring it home, except that it seemed so robustly autumnal (this was back in autumn, mind you). Surprisingly enough, I ended up finding at least three uses for butternut squash that I liked quite a bit.

The first one was a variation on Easy Brown Rice Risotto, which was sort of a no-brainer because I've made it before and liked it with sweet potatoes. Here's how that went:

Butternut Squash & Brown Rice Risotto

1/2 butternut squash, peeled and cubed (about 1/4" cubes)
About 1/4 cup olive oil
1 Tbsp rosemary
2.5 cups chicken stock
1 T butter
1 cup long-grain brown rice
1 cup grated Parmesan
1 cup walnuts, toasted briefly in a dry skillet
1 cup feta cheese

1. Drizzle cubed squash with olive oil and sprinkle with rosemary. Bake at 400 degrees 30-45 minutes or until roasted and tender.
2. Meanwhile, bring chicken stock to a boil. Add butter. Once butter is melted, stir in the rice and reduce heat to simmer. Cover and cook 45-50 minutes. The rice should be moist.
3. Remove from heat and fluff with a fork. Stir in Parmesan and roasted squash.
4. Garnish generously with toasted walnuts and feta cheese.

Hummus was next on the list. I actually didn't realize until after I'd made it that butternut squash was the first on the list of possible add-ins we'd listed for hummus way back when.

Curried Butternut Squash Hummus
1/2 butternut squash, cubed and roasted as above except sprinkled with curry powder instead of rosemary

Hummus prepared like this (or any other way)

Add the cubed squash to the hummus and process in a food processor until smooth.

I think my favorite, though, was butternut squash soup, even though I seem to have failed to take a picture of it. It was wonderful--silky, sweet but not too sweet. I had originally looked at a recipe from Smitten Kitchen, but found that it had too many ingredients I didn't have on hand. However, commenter #3 on the afore-linked post had just the ticket; I made very few substitutions except to eliminate the leeks, chives, and brie.

Butternut Squash Soup

1 large butternut squash, cut in half. Bake at 350 degrees/45 min.(cut side down on baking dish)
Chop 1 carrot, 1 onion, 1 leek (white part mostly). Saute in butter in large pot.
Add cooked squash and 2 liters chicken stock to pot and bring to a boil.
Add one apple (peeled and chopped), one bay leaf, and one tsp. sugar.
Simmer 40 min. Remove bay leaf and mash/puree.Add salt and pepper to taste.

Next up I think I'm going to have to do a dessert round.

Snow!

2009-12-19T13:10:00.002-06:00

We're having record snowfall in the Washington area today. We made the most of it and went out grocery shopping. As you can see, like a good Midwestern baby, Eden really enjoyed it:

Making our bed and lying in it

2009-12-16T20:33:00.002-06:00

This is kind of a long story and sort of old news, but I thought it was worth reporting.

The takeaways from this rather long story, if you don't feel like reading on, are:

1) I (along with many in the scientific community) believe that the evidence shows that conventional mattresses are not safe and they contribute to SIDS.

2) A Guardsman mattress protection plan, like any warranty, is worth about as much as the paper it's written on. I paid around $70 for the original plan, so for my time and trouble I was compensated basically $55 toward a new mattress when I paid $350 for the original. Not a route I would go again. Our latex mattress does come with a limited warranty, but it's not anything we had to pay extra for. And, while they were super nice and responsive when I was scheduling a cleaning, they were suddenly very difficult to get ahold of when it came time to pay out.

3) Our latex mattress, while initially expensive, is comfortable, durable, customizable, and, we believe, safe--the safest option we've been able to find for cosleeping. This makes it a worthwhile investment for our family, who will spend over 1/3 of the rest of our lives there!

Here's how we got to this point.

Way back in 2006, I brought a Simmons Beautyrest mattress to our relationship that Matt and I have always been really happy with. I bought it in 2005, just before I graduated from college. It's a queen-size, which was always plenty of room for the two of us.

However, the bed was unfortunately about the only thing which did not escape our homebirth completely unscathed. Despite not actually giving birth in the bed--well, it suffered a little bit anyway. Enough said.

Luckily, I had purchased a protection plan from Guardsman which guaranteed that if anything ever made it through their mattress cover, they would replace the mattress. I contacted them to let them know that this was the case, and they politely informed me that they would first send a technician out to try to clean the spot; then if he couldn't, they would replace it.

The tech came and was very nice and helpful, but was unable to get the spot out with the first treatment. He informed me he needed to come back a couple of days later to try a stronger treatment which couldn't be combined with the first.

After he left, I noticed a strong ammonia-like chemical smell in the apartment, clearly a result of the spot removers used on the mattress. Coincidentally, while the tech had been here I'd been reading this article. Basically, New Zealand has eradicated SIDS for the past FIFTEEN YEARS (it's an older article) by wrapping their mattresses in polyethylene covers which prevent the interaction of toxic flame retardants (required by the government) and common fungus, which combine in mattresses to release poisonous gases.

They've attempted to share this research with the United States, where 8 babies a night die of SIDS, but despite the fact that it's a cheap, easy solution which can't hurt, the United States has basically said it's not interested. Why? The above article postulates it may be because admitting that government-mandated flame retardants are killing babies would be invoking a HUGE amount of liability, and because SIDS research is big business.

Sad.

Lest you think this is just one of my hippie trips, one of the New Zealand researchers notes that the level of success with their mattress-wrapping campaign amounts to one billion times the amount of evidence needed to establish scientific proof.

Fortunately, these covers are available in the United States. Unfortunately, they don't come in adult sizes, and as we are firm believers in the physical, emotional, and developmental benefits of cosleeping, our baby sleeps with us in our adult-sized bed.

Clearly we had to do something.

I called Guardsman and shared the above with them, saying I was uncomfortable with the idea of sleeping on the mattress now that it had been impregnated with chemicals and preferred not to go through with the second cleaning. They demurred, saying the chemicals were safe and nothing could be done about the warranty until a second cleaning was attempted. The tech subsequently came back and could not remove the stain with a second cleaning. anyway After a number of phone calls to Guardsman, they finally said that since we had bought the bed at a store in Iowa which did not deliver to Virginia, they could either purchase the bed in Iowa and we would have to pay to ship it out here, or they could give us a "courtesy payment" of $125.

When I paid $350 for the original mattress, $125 didn't feel like much of a courtesy. But since we didn't actually want another queen-sized Beautyrest mattress, for both size and chemical concerns, we grudgingly accepted it and started looking for another bed.

Incidentally, we were able to sell the mattresses and frame on Craigslist for another $125 to someone who didn't care about the stain.

So with our nominal cash in hand, the hunt was on for a safe mattress. Chemical-free mattresses are available in the United States, but by law they must either contain a natural flame retardant like wool, or you have to have a prescription to buy them. After much research on the various options, their cost, safety, durability, and comfort, the route we chose to go was a natural latex mattress which contains a wool layer, thereby bypassing the need for a prescription. There are a number of discount latex mattresses out there, but we chose to go with a Savvy Rest because all of their ingredients--rubber, cotton, wool--are certified organic. We don't believe that organic certification is the be-all, end-all in any way, but it's a starting point, at least. We also read a number of reviews and managed to track down a Savvy Rest dealer--a chiropractor about ten minutes from us who had a full-size bed set up in his office. We got to come over and roll around on it with Eden, as well as try out the layers (soft, medium, and firm) in all different orders-- the order in which the layers are stacked affects how soft or firm the mattress feels. It's also split down the middle, in case your sleeping partner prefers a different firmness than you.

We were sold, and the chiropractor (Dr Bruce Short of Herndon) even threw in a SavvyRest shredded rubber pillow for us. I sleep on this now and it is THE MOST AWESOME PILLOW I'VE EVER FELT. We hadn't thought about pillows posing basically the same problems and hazards as a mattress, but once we thought about it, it seemed obvious. Matt chose an organic wool Holy Lamb pillow, which he has also been incredibly happy with.

We've now had the bed for about a month (after a few weeks of camping out on a futon and an air mattress while we waited for it to be delivered) and we're thrilled with every aspect of it. It was relatively easy to assemble (it ships as six separate latex sheets plus the organic cotton cover, which zips over it). We also opted for a wool "puddle pad" which helps protect the bed in the event of leaky sleepers (such as diaper-free babies). We are loving the extra room (plenty for two adults, an increasingly wiggly baby, and\ two cats) and find the bed and pillows exceptionally comfortable. While the price tag (around $2500) was originally a little tough to swallow, we found that any king mattress was going to be pricey, and the peace of mind and durability this one offered was well worth it. From what I understand, other customizable sleeping options (such as a Sleep Number Bed) are comparably expensive, without the benefit of chemical-free organic ingredients. Plus, we anticipate sleeping on it for pretty much the rest of our lives, as extreme as that sounds, and therefore the cost-per-use makes it actually a great bargain.

Baked potato soup

2009-12-16T13:50:00.000-06:00

Baked potato soup has become one of our stick-to-your-ribs cold-weather standards. I've tweaked the recipe I found here (no low-fat ingredients in THIS household!), and we like to deep-fry the leftover potato skins in the bacon grease and then broil them with cheese, bacon, sour cream, and salsa on top. YUM! Real hangover food. All in the name of not wasting a thing.

Baked potato soup
2 tbsp. butter
1/2 onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
4-6 baking potatoes (about 2-1/2 lbs.)
2/3 cup whole-wheat flour
6 cups whole milk
1 cup (4 oz.) shredded extra-sharp cheddar cheese
1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
1 cup sour cream
6 bacon slices, cooked and crumbled

"Bake" potatoes in microwave until soft, about 8-12 minutes.
In a large pot or Dutch oven, melt the butter over medium heat. Add the onions and garlic and sauté until soft, about 8 minutes.
Place flour into the vegetables; gradually add milk, stirring with a whisk until blended. Cook over medium heat until thick and bubbly (about 8 minutes).
Add mashed potatoes, cheese, salt, and 1/2 tsp. pepper, stirring until cheese melts. Remove from heat.
Stir in sour cream. Cook over low heat 10 minutes or until thoroughly heated (do not boil).

For a recipe for potato skins (pictured above), you can go here.

What we're up to

2009-12-16T13:36:00.004-06:00

Eden's two teeth are making more of an appearance every day. At five months old, she's suddenly lots of fun to play with. Peekaboo is a favorite, along with any and every kind of roughhousing-- being thrown in the air, wrestled with on the bed, piled with pillows, hung upside-down. She's still really not eating any solid food, although we let her taste things on a pretty regular basis. Her favorites so far: butternut squash soup (more on that later), bananas, and chicken pot pie. She is also an incredibly fast army-crawler, so merits a lot of close watching.

This week and next, I'm off of school, so I've actually been enjoying some reading for pleasure (!!) again. Right now: Baby Hearts, Baby Signs, and The Grass-fed Gourmet Cookbook (thanks, Pam!). The latter is especially handy as we bought half of a grass-fed steer to share with another family this fall, so our deep freeze is full of steaks, roasts, and hamburger. We got an incredibly good deal on it and are enjoying incorporating a beef dish or two every week.

We're also preparing ourselves to move back to Iowa come September. While my preceptors haven't signed on the dotted line yet, we're not anticipating any complications and we're feeling like we've been called back in that direction. I'm actually hoping for a part-time job to open up at UIHC, and beyond that--who knows.

In the meantime, we're enjoying our last 50-degree Virginia December, and planning to visit Mount Vernon for Christmas since I work the holiday and so we'll be staying in town. Matt has a little time off and so I'll be picking up a few extra shifts and I'm sure we'll find a way to justify going out to eat once or twice as well.

All she wants for Christmas

2009-12-07T13:59:00.002-06:00

Eden has TWO TEETH!! One showed up on December 5th and the other one the very next day. She doesn't really like anyone looking at or feeling them (let alone taking pictures of them), but take our word for it: they're here!

Settling back in

2009-12-03T08:16:00.006-06:00

from Tristan & Isolde

After a few days of rough starts and not wanting to take a nap or nurse following our Thanksgiving travels, Eden seems to be back on track. Thank goodness! She usually takes a morning, afternoon, and evening nap and then goes to bed with us between 10 and 11pm and wakes up at 6 to go potty, then goes back to bed till around 9. Last night, she fell asleep around 9pm while we watched a movie (Tristan and Isolde--one of our favorites, for its beauty and simplicity and come on, how not to love someone with James Franco's versatility?) and slept through until almost 8am. It seems to have reset her somewhat because she woke up smiley and happy this morning, then fell asleep for a morning nap without protest (or excessive amounts of bouncing, back patting, and singing, which is what it sometimes takes).

On top of Tristan and Isolde, last night was also made special by the cooking of a fantastic batch of spaghetti and meatballs, which we've made before, and while this time the meatball mix seemed a little wet and ended up somewhat disintegrating when simmered in the sauce, it still made a delicious rich ragu to ladle over homemade spaghetti. We have this pasta roller and we like it quite a bit for simple, delicious, and relatively quick homemade spaghetti and fettucine. It's also by far the cheapest pasta roller we could find, but it works great for us. If you haven't made fresh pastas--I'd really recommend it! Ours calls for a recipe of 2-1/2 cups of flour (we use 100% whole-wheat) and 3 eggs (sometimes it seems like I need to add a fourth--probably depending on the size of the eggs). And--a bottle of red wine. We are unabashed fans of the $3.29 Charles Shaw Cabernet Sauvignon from Trader Joe's, and last night felt like we might just have something to celebrate. I have been working for over a year to try to set up midwifery clinicals somewhere--Virginia, DC, Maryland, Iowa, Wisconsin, just somewhere! It now seems like it might be possible that I may be able to work something out with a midwife near Iowa City --you know, where it all began. My sentiments about this echo the same mix of sadness and excitement I had about leaving Iowa City in the first place--but then again, that's not news.

Back home for the holidays!

2009-11-30T12:30:00.005-06:00

My apologies to the Hellenbrand clan for not having as many pictures of them--I lost my camera for the first 2 days of our visit. But rest assured, a good time was had by all at both locations (even if the transit between was a little rough).

We're here.

2009-11-21T22:54:00.001-06:00

After a crazy, at times uproariously funny and at times frustrating trip, Eden, my mom and I arrived safe and sound. Some brand-new stranger anxiety and a major, major meltdown later, Eden is finally sleeping soundly. It's great to see everybody, but nobody ever said it would be easy.

Let the holidays begin!

2009-11-18T15:08:00.005-06:00

image by redstamp.com

Today is Matt's birthday and his mom's. Happy birthday, guys!

My mom also arrived today.

Thus, we're officially kicking off our holiday season.

My mom is here to help out with Eden while Matt's on his annual business trip next week. (Last year Eden, the size of a tadpole, and I went along. The year before I did not.) So Matt will fly out to San Diego on Friday, then my mom and Eden and I are flying back to Cedar Rapids on Saturday. Matt will join us from San Diego on Tuesday and we'll have Thanskgiving dinner with my family. On Wednesday, we're headed up to Wisconsin to have Thanksgiving and Christmas with Matt's family. Then Matt, Eden, and I will fly back home Friday night. Got all that? And of course, there will be a number of meet-and-greets while we're back in the midwest--not the least of which will be Eden meeting three of her four aunts for the first time!

It will be interesting, to say the least, to travel with Eden. She hates being in the car and has difficulty eating and getting to sleep when there are interesting new people around. We're looking forward to going back and seeing everybody, though! Should be an adventure no matter what.

Other holidays in November:
My mom's birthday (November 23)
Pam's birthday (November 30)
Our Restonversary(November 30 I believe)
Our Pamiversary (earlier this week--November 15)

What a fine and festive month it will be.

Falling

2009-10-27T08:19:00.004-05:00

How many more posts can I do on how the-more-things-change-the-more-they-stay-the-same? Once again, like last year, fall finds us marveling at the beauty of autumn in Virginia, and reflecting on new beginnings and fresh starts and trying to find a place to put down roots. Of course, we're so lucky to have so many places to call home, and so many people laying claim to us (okay, mainly to Eden). But it does make life tricky in a bittersweet sort of way.

Anyway, enough of that. Here are some pictures of fall in Virginia this year.

I realize this one is a little Bigfoot-sighting-esque. But it's the first time I've ever seen a (live) fox in the wild and thought it bore magnification.

Free cookie and hot chocolate this weekend!

2009-10-22T10:07:00.004-05:00

The only thing better than a $10 date is a FREE ONE, which looks like we'll be scooping up at Barnes & Noble this Saturday. There's one well within walking distance of our place, which is awesome given our recent commitment to keep Eden out of the car.

Speaking of yummy ways to celebrate fall, we're hoping this weekend to make up some Apple Cider Doughnuts and possibly some pumpkin bread pudding. We made these pumpkin pancakes last weekend with some canned pumpkin we got from the eviction, and there's more in the freezer. The pancakes were pretty delicious (though despite others' comments, we did find it needed a generous splash of additional milk), but pancakes have never been my forte--the standing around, the burning of outsides, the undercooking of insides. Bread pudding seems like a surer bet.

And speaking of freebies, tomorrow is the last day to answer a trivia question for a free lunch coupon at Ted's Montana Grill. We've each racked up a few of these but haven't been out to get them yet.

Salmon chowder

2009-10-20T14:47:00.000-05:00

I couldn't find a recipe for the kind of salmon chowder I wanted to make, so I had to come up with one myself.

Salmon Chowder
Ingredients:
2 Tbsp melted butter
1 Tbsp dill
1 Tbsp parsley
~1/2 lb salmon fillets
3 medium carrots
2 medium stalks celery
2 medium potatoes
1/2 onion
1/4 cup butter or lard
1/4 cup flour
1 cup frozen, fresh, or canned corn
4 cups of whole milk
2-3 Tbsp salt
Sprinkling of cracked pepper

Heat oven to 450. Drizzle the melted butter in a 9x9 or similar pan that the salmon will fit in. Sprinkle herbs on top. Place salmon, skin side up, and cook for 5 minutes. Flip and cook for another side or until salmon is flaky and opaque. Peel off skin, flake salmon, and set aside.

Melt the 1/4 cup butter or lard over medium heat in a large saucepan. Add the vegetables, saute 5 minutes or until lightly cooked. Add flour and stir until vegetables are coated and flour is lightly cooked. Add milk and simmer until thickened, 10-15 minutes. Stir in salmon, corn salt, and pepper, and simmer until vegetables are soft.

I give this a 10 and Matt likes it quite a bit too. Creamy, a little bit sweet, and not too fishy at all. There would probably be an easier way to cook the salmon--maybe poaching in the milk or a little broth?--but this is how I'm used to cooking it and so it works well that way for me.

Reston Oktoberfest

2009-10-12T15:16:00.002-05:00

This weekend we found some time to hit the Reston Oktoberfest, as well as lunch at Uncle Julio's one of our favorite Mexican restaurants. (Which is, happily, within walking distance.) As you can see, a good lunch was had by all--even our smallest member.

Perinatal

2009-10-09T11:42:00.005-05:00

On Wednesday, Eden and I had the good fortune to attend the Perinatal Symposium on contemporary birthing practices and birthing rights. It was organized by Jessica Clements, an acquaintance of mine who has recently become a friend. I volunteered to help pull some of it together; my brother even did the website design. (Thanks, L!) Some familiar names were there, like Henci Goer and Robbie Davis-Floyd, and Debra Pascali-Bonaro, along with some that were unfamiliar to me, but no less impressive--like Shafia Monroe and Aravinda Pillalamarri. I was blown away by the true multidisciplinariness of the event--midwives, doulas, nurses, lawyers, anthropologists, artists, and even belly dancers all came together out of concern for birthing women. Many of them spoke of the need to secure a safe birthing tradition for our daughters, something which had a new resonance for me as I've attended many birth conferences, but this was the first in which I had my own fuzzy-headed, chubby-cheeked little girl in my lap.

One of my other favorite things about the conference was that it was the first time I've been in a context where women were openly and proudly breastfeeding. From five-week-old twins to babies in arms to toddlers who ran up to their mothers to nurse, there was a whole lot of breastfeeding going on, and it was a wonderful thing to be a part of. Unfortunately, in our culture, breastfeeding is nearly always a solitary event, as opposed to more traditional cultures in which it is a normal, social part of everyday life. It made me realize what I'm missing out on the rest of the time. While so many babies and children meant that at times things were a little rambunctious and the speakers were hard to hear, it was also neat to have a constant undercurrent of squeaking, sighing, murmuring (and occasionally shrieking) baby noises as an appropriate accompaniment to the topic at hand, and as a reminder that to all of us there, it was of far more than just passing or theoretical significance.

Jessica introducing the panel

Debra Pascali-Bonaro

Shafia Monroe

Lynn Griesemer

Just in time for fall...

2009-10-06T13:32:00.003-05:00

...a mac and cheese recipe that is SO GOOD! We are huge fans of the creamy Wisconsin Mac 'n Cheese from Noodles & Company, and this is a lot like it. I found the recipe on Smitten Kitchen and basically halved it (with some rounding here and there) since the original recipe serves 12 and calls for more cheese than even we usually have around. I have also found you can reduce the amount of cheese in the sauce by about a handful, and increase the salt a little, and it will be just fine.

This is one of "those" M&C recipes people love to complain about--those which Involve a White Sauce. Making a white sauce is one of those things that personally I think takes longer to complain about than it does to DO. Just do it already! If you're not comfortable a flour-and-fat roux--the base for every gravy, white sauce, cream soup, pot pie filling, and other velvety delight known to the kitchen--it's time to get comfortable. It really couldn't be easier. Video tutorials abound, but basically, just cook the oil in the bubbling fat already. Then stir in your broth or milk or other liquid, bring back to a boil, and whisk together until thick and smooth.

Our butter is expensive, so I use lard.

Martha Stewart’s Creamy Mac-and-Cheese
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen, who adapted it from Martha Stewart Living Cookbook: The Original Classics
Serves 6
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, plus more for casserole
3 slices white bread, crusts removed, torn into 1/4- to l/2-inch pieces
2-3/4 cups milk
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon coarse salt, plus more for water
1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
2-1/4 cups (about 9 ounces) grated sharp white cheddar cheese
1 cup (about 4 ounces) grated Gruyère or 3/4 cups (about 2-3 ounces) grated Pecorino Romano cheese (I actually used about 1/4 cup Parmesan)
1/2 pound elbow macaroni

1. Preheat oven to 375°F. Butter a 3-quart casserole dish; set aside. (I use a 9x9 square pan.) Place the bread in a medium bowl. In a small saucepan over medium heat, melt 1 tablespoons butter. Pour the melted butter into the bowl with the bread, and toss. Set the breadcrumbs aside.

2. Warm the milk in a medium saucepan over medium heat. (I put it in a glass measuring cup in the microwave. Combines a step and saves a dish.) Melt the remaining 3 tablespoons butter in a high-sided skillet over medium heat. When the butter bubbles, add the flour. Cook, stirring, 1 minute.

3. While whisking, slowly pour in the hot milk a little at a time to keep mixture smooth. Continue cooking, whisking constantly, until the mixture bubbles and becomes thick, 8 to 12 minutes.

4. Remove the pan from the heat. Stir in salt, nutmeg, black pepper, cayenne pepper, 1.5 cups cheddar cheese, and Gruyère (or Pecorino Romano); set the cheese sauce aside.

5. Cover a large pot of salted water, and bring to a boil. Cook the macaroni until the outside of pasta is cooked and the inside is underdone, 2 to 3 minutes. Transfer the macaroni to a colander, rinse under cold running water, and drain well. Stir the macaroni into the reserved cheese sauce.

6. Pour the mixture into the prepared dish. Sprinkle the remaining cheddar cheese, 1/2 cup Gruyère (or 1/4 cup Pecorino Romano), and the breadcrumbs over the top. Bake until golden brown, about 30 minutes (though we needed a bit more time to get it brown, but your oven may vary). Transfer the dish to a wire rack for 5 minutes; serve.

I also cook the macaroni first and make the cheese sauce in its pan while it hangs out and drains in the colander. Maybe Martha has somebody to wash all these dishes for her, but I don't.

Anyway, a great make-ahead meal and just all-around delicious!

Last fall...

2009-09-29T11:23:00.002-05:00

Things were different, and certainly quieter. We ate bulgur and bananas for breakfast instead of eggs cooked in lard, which is what we eat now. Instead of getting up early to ride to work, I wake up, roll over, and nurse Eden before kissing Matt goodbye and settling in for the day. We're once again getting ready for Matt to travel to a meeting, but instead of going along, I'll stay behind with Eden. We still enjoy taking walks, reading together, and watching reruns.

Our philosophies on lots of things have changed. But the theme of contentment in that post still rings very true today.

Quiche of the week: Sausage, onions, mushrooms, & cheese

2009-09-28T13:13:00.004-05:00

This week's quiche came about because I had leftover sausage from a meal of biscuits and gravy, leftover mushrooms from a dish of chicken and noodles that never materialized, leftover Monterey Jack from a batch of quesadillas, and half an onion in the fridge. I love that about quiche! I also love that it's possible to make a quiche pretty much one-handed. With one hand I sift together the lard and flour, clump it into a ball, and press it into a pan for baking. With one hand I can crack and beat the eggs together with the milk, saute the vegetables (OK, chopping takes two), and combine them all. This makes it an excellent meal to make when Eden is in the sling or the Ergo and I need to have one hand at least on standby to make sure she doesn't lurch out of it, or topple out when I bend down. So in addition to being healthy, tasty, easy, and cheap--one more reason it's on the menu every week!

To make this quiche, I utilized our standard quiche formula (though with only 1.5 cups of milk and 5 eggs, since we were low on milk) and threw in a handful of mushrooms, diced onions, and cooked sausage that I sauteed together in a little lard. I put the cheese (about a cup) directly on top of the crust since I've heard that keeps it from getting soggy.

Then I added the eggs and milk, and baked the whole thing for about 20 minutes at 425, enough to firm it up but not cook it all the way through because I'm actually planning for us to cook and eat it tomorrow. But Eden's extra-long nap in the Ergo this morning was too good an opportunity to pass up, so I made it ahead today. Just another thing to love about quiche!

Family pictures

2009-09-26T17:34:00.004-05:00

These are actually from last weekend, when we took Eden out for a drive and picked up all those tomatoes. We're pleased with how well we've been able to incorporate her into our self-photography! Now, if only she'd look at the camera and smile when we do it...